by Cindy Donovan | Webinar & High Ticket Marketing
VIP Days: The Secret Strategy of Top-Earning Coaches
How many hours per day do you spend on the phone with clients?
If you’re like most coaches, the answer is often “more than I want to.”
Let’s face it, coaching can be exhausting. Sure, you love working with different clients, and you get a real charge out of being able to help someone overcome their issues and achieve their goals.
But it’s still taxing to be on the phone all day, every day. And add to that the need to constantly be looking for new clients, and you’ve got a recipe for burnout.
That’s why so many coaches are beginning to offer VIP days. Simply put, a VIP day is a whole day spent with a single client (or maybe two or three, depending on your preferences). Rather than jumping from call to call and trying to keep up with multiple clients and their various issues, you can simply focus on a single client and a single goal.
Even better, with coaches routinely charging as much as $10,000 for a VIP day, you can see that scheduling just 4 clients per month can bring in more than a whole week’s worth of one-on-one calls.
Here’s how VIP days work: Typically, clients will travel to your location. You might choose to meet in your home, in a rented meeting space, or in a hotel. You can also host virtual VIP days via Skype or phone, if you prefer.
Your VIP day will be tightly focused and have a single goal. If your market is online business owners and you are a genius at book writing, your VIP days might be designed to get a client to plan, outline, and begin writing her first book. If you work with working moms in search of balance in their lives, you might focus your day around creating a workable schedule for the family, with planners and other organizational tools created by the end of the day.
Your VIP clients receive the benefit of your expertise, your undivided attention (no texting with the kids during a VIP day!), and a day spent simply focusing on the task at hand. It’s a powerful way to get things done, and unlike conferences and other training programs, it encourages clients to actually do the work on site, rather than going home with a notebook full of ideas she’ll never implement.
VIP days also make for a great opportunity to upsell your client into an ongoing group coaching program. After all, she’ll likely need support after she gets back home, and regular coaching sessions with other VIP clients is a great way to get the support she needs to continue working towards her goals.
Ready to offer your own VIP days? Start by asking your current clients if it’s something they’d be interested in. Chances are they’ll give you an enthusiastic thumbs up, and you’ll be ready to start putting together a plan to offer powerful, focused VIP coaching.
Social Proof Sells: How to Build a Buzz During Your VIP Day and Sell Out Future Events
Selling anything online today requires plenty of “social proof.” Testimonials, “likes” and “shares,” re-tweets and re-grams are all ways of saying “I like this. It’s worthy of my time and money.”
For training programs, ebooks and other downloadable items, testimonials are the biggest and best tool in your toolbox. But when you’re running a live event such as a VIP day, you have other, more powerful options.
Take Lots of Photos
If your VIP day is live, remember to bring your camera along—or better yet, hire a professional photographer to document. There’s no better way to get future VIP clients excited about your offers than to show them photos of what to expect.
If you hold your event in a hotel or resort, photos of the surroundings can give it the feel of a relaxing retreat. If your event is virtual, grab some screenshots of your face-to-face video chat. This will help show that even if you don’t meet your clients in person, there is still a very real connection.
Use the photos later on your:
- Blog
- Sales page
- Email newsletter
- Social media profiles
- Event flyers
Just be sure you get the appropriate model release from all your attendees before publishing their photos publicly. Nothing puts a damper on your next event quite like a cease and desist order!
Getting Testimonials
During your event—while everyone is feeling enthusiastic about their business and excited for what’s on the horizon—is the perfect time to grab some meaningful testimonials. Written testimonials are fine, but if you can capture them on video, you’ll be well ahead of the competition.
Simply set up a video camera on a tripod in a quiet corner of your venue, and ask attendees to take a few minutes out of their day to share their thoughts. You could even do this on the fly with a simple cell-phone video if you like.
Hashtags are Hot
Here’s another tip for getting the word out about your VIP days: create a hashtag. Every time you post on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram about your event, use the hashtag. Encourage attendees to use it as well. You can create searches using your hashtag and post the results to your sales page, your blog, or anywhere else you talk about an upcoming VIP day.
If this sounds like a lot of work for one person to manage, well, it can be. But make no mistake, social proof is critical to your success, so unless your event is super confidential, the work will pay off. If necessary, consider hiring an assistant to take the stress out of photos, testimonials and social posting. That way all your attention can be right where it needs to be, on your clients.
Planning Your Day: Why “Informal” is the Best Way to Kill Your VIP Day
Some of us like to fly by the seat of our pants. We “go with the flow,” and relish the flexibility our online, self-employed status gives us. I get it.
But when you’re planning your VIP day, freeform flexibility is the kiss of death. Your VIP day has a goal, and in order to reach it, you have to stay on track. And that, of course, requires careful planning.
Make an Appointment Schedule
Every minute of your day should be planned out, from when and where you’ll be having breakfast, to the exact minute of departure. By leaving nothing to chance, you’ll eliminate the possibility of running overtime, and never have to worry about missing an important lesson or learning opportunity.
In addition, your attendees will know exactly what to expect as well, so they can be prepared ahead of time and make the most of your day together.
A page from any appointment calendar will work for mapping out your day. Begin with the non-negotiables:
- Meal times (allow for travel if necessary)
- Check-out times (for the hotel or resort)
- Breaks
Next, fill in other must-have times:
- Introductions (if you’ll have more than one VIP in attendance)
- Guest speakers
- Work time (for independent or group study)
If your VIP day is actually two or three days, then you’ll also want to include time away from the main location.
This may seem like very little time is left for actual coaching, but if you keep your VIP day focused on a single outcome, it’s more than enough to give all your attendees the attention they deserve.
Publish Your Schedule
Don’t forget to share your schedule with your VIPs. Having this document in hand before they arrive will help them prepare for the event. They’ll know ahead of time what questions they want to be sure to ask, what documents or other information they should bring with them, and even what to pack.
Not only that, but planning your VIP day well in advance leaves no room for rabbit trails and other unproductive time. You want to be sure your attendees get great value from their day with you, so keeping everyone on track is important, and will make you a coaching superstar.
Weeding Out the Wannabes: How to Design a VIP Application Process That Works
Ask anyone who has ever offered coaching services before and they’ll tell you that a certain percentage of clients simply will not (or can not) do the work. Sure, they love the idea of having a coach. They might know a good coach is the secret to business and life success. But for some reason, they just aren’t ready.
Maybe they aren’t as advanced as they think they are, and they choose the wrong program.
Maybe they’re simply professional students, who never intend to build a business, but instead just like to learn about it.
Whatever the case may be, it’s important that you eliminate these people from your potential VIP client pool.
This is especially critical if you are hosting a group event. It will be uncomfortable for everyone if you have 4 clients attending, and 3 of them are advanced students while one is just starting out. In addition, if you only work with clients who have reached a certain level of success, you’ll need to eliminate those who simply aren’t a good fit for you.
Pro tip: The ability to pay is not a good indicator of success. Many people have (and spend) lots of money on training without ever doing the work required to get a business off the ground.
Design Your Application Process to Self-Select the Best Candidates
The easiest way to avoid clients who aren’t a good fit is to require an application before payment. This can be as simple as a PDF or email questionnaire with just a few questions. You can ask things such as:
- Who (and when) have you coached with before? What was the result?
- What exact results would you like to achieve from your coaching experience?
- What type of business do you have? Is it successful?
These will all give you a feel for the applicant, and allow you to know ahead of time if she’ll be a good fit.
But you can help eliminate applicants who aren’t a good match simply by changing some of the language on your application. For example, you might ask about the applicant’s current income, but rather than allowing her to write in any answer, give her a list of choices. If you only work with people who are earning six figures and up, then a conspicuous lack of those lower income brackets will be enough to make someone who’s just starting out think twice about applying.
You can do the same thing with language on other questions. If you only want to work with people who have a positive attitude about coaching, then you might ask, “Tell me about the best coaching experience you’ve had and what you loved about it.” Negative Nancys will have a difficult time answering that one, and you’ll be able to spot them immediately.
Even if you only invite current coaching clients to VIP days (so you already know and like them) it’s still a good idea to have some kind of application process. After all, VIP days are far more intense than a monthly coaching program, so you want to be sure all applicants know what to expect. And the best way to do that is through a formal application.
Single Focus: The Secret to Powerful VIP Days
Unlike a 3-day conference or telesummit, VIP days are generally tightly focused with a single goal. You want your client to walk away having solved her biggest business problem (or at least one that’s been holding her back for some time) and be able to jump back into work with a sense of accomplishment.
You don’t want her to go home with a head full of ideas and a notebook full of half-finished thoughts that she’ll never take action on.
Keeping your VIP day tightly focused is beneficial to you as well. Chances are you’re the go-to person in your market for one (or maybe two) things. Perhaps you’re known for helping clients break through their money issues to earn more than they ever thought possible. Or maybe you’re a genius at building an affiliate marketing empire. Or you might be the 4-hour workweek type, able to set up systems and processes that get your clients out of the office while still growing their income.
Whatever your area of expertise, by offering a VIP day centered around it, you’ll be able to command a much higher rate than a general “coach with me” kind of day where anything goes. After all, you’re the expert, so it’s time to show off your stuff.
You’ll find that attracting your ideal client is easier when your day has a strict focus as well. It might seem counterintuitive, but when you offer buyers lots of choices, they’ll often become confused, and end up buying nothing. The same is true for coaching. When faced with many ideas and potential programs, there’s a tendency to become overwhelmed.
By remaining focused, you have the opportunity to show potential clients exactly what you can help them accomplish, rather than using vague words and empty promises such as “take your business to the next level” or “overcome your roadblocks to success.”
Instead, your clients will know that after their VIP day with you, they can look forward to having a “step-by-step personalized action plan for becoming a super affiliate” or a “new attitude towards money and how it can work for you.”
Focus makes your sales page easier to write, ad targeting clearer, and testimonials more powerful, too.
Of course, all that means that you really do have to have the focus (and enough expertise) to teach for an entire day on a single subject. If you don’t feel you can pull that off, consider bringing in a guest expert who can speak about a related topic. For example, if your VIP day is all about money mindset, then a brief meeting with someone who can offer tips on budgeting would be a perfect fit.
Here’s the bottom line. The more focused your goal for your VIP clients, the more they will get out of your event. And the more value they receive, the more raving fans you’ll have, who will happily share you and your coaching programs with their friends and colleagues.
Read Later - DOWNLOAD THIS POST AS PDF >> Click...
by Cindy Donovan | Webinar & High Ticket Marketing
Webinars are an excellent way to increase sales and conversions, especially on big-ticket items.
Webinars are interactive.
They are more engaging, so they also have higher conversion rates than other types of marketing.
A few benefits of webinars over other sales presentations include:
- The limited time nature increases participation. People can’t procrastinate if a webinar is only available at a specific time.
- Active participation in the form of chat, question-and-answer sessions, etc. makes for a richer, more engaging experience that makes people pay attention and take action.
- Social proof from other participants can increase conversions.
In this report, you’re going to learn how to set up and run successful webinars, with a focus on selling high value items that pay a higher commission than average products. You’ll learn how and why you should run automated webinars, and how to increase webinar conversions.
So let’s get started.
Selling High Ticket Items via Webinar
Webinars can certainly increase sales to smaller ticket items, however generally speaking they are much more cost-effective for selling high-ticket items.
The main reason why these big-ticket items make more sense is because of the limited nature of webinars. Most webinar programs only have a limited number of seats available, generally due to the limitations of the software itself, which might not be able to handle large numbers of users at once.
Because there are so few people who will be able to attend each webinar session, it only makes sense to promote higher ticket items. If you are only paid $10 commission on a small ticket item, and you only have 50 attendees, you’d need a 20% conversion rate to make 10 sales, which would only earn you $100 in commission.
That’s not exactly a princely sum for the trouble of planning, organizing and carrying out a webinar. And remember, a 20% conversion rate is very difficult to achieve even with a webinar.
However, if you were paid $100 commission on a large-ticket item, with the same 50 attendees, you’d only need a 10% conversion to get 5 sales, which would earn you $500 in commission.
As you can see, you’d need half the conversions to earn five times as much income. So large-ticket items really make sense when you have a limited number of people to market to, such as you do with a webinar.
Not only must you worry about the physical limitations of your webinar software and server, but the schedules of potential attendees as well. You may see fewer attendees than you expect because people are busy at the time you schedule your webinar.
It’s possible to record your webinar and distribute it to people who cannot attend, however conversions on recorded webinars aren’t likely to be nearly as high as during the live broadcast, because you can’t have viewers of the recorded webinar interact with you as they could during the initial live broadcast.
Doing the Math
Before you plan your webinar, it’s important to do a little math to be sure your webinar has the best chance to be profitable. (In other words, worth your time.)
First, figure out which product you’d like to promote. Ideally, this should be a product that you’ll make at least $100 in commission from, though higher amounts would be even better, obviously.
However, don’t choose a product solely based on its commission. It’s better to choose a product that makes a bit less commission and converts much better than to choose a product that has a very high commission and won’t convert at all.
Let’s say your product will make you $100 in commission. If you want to make at least $500 from the webinar, you know you need to get a total of five sales.
You may not know the exact conversion rate of your product, but you can estimate it. A 5% conversion rate is a good starting point as an estimate. It helps greatly if you’ve tested the product already, or if the product owner has released public information about its overall conversion rates, but 5% is generally a safe estimate for most products.
In order to get five sales at a 5% conversion rate, you need a total of 100 people in attendance. You could make more, or you could make less. But getting a minimum of 100 people to attend would be your goal.
If you have a high-converting product that gives you $500 commission, you would only need one sale to earn what you desire. This means a higher-priced product would require much fewer attendees.
Automated Webinars
Automated webinars make it easy to set up webinars at times when you cannot theoretically be in attendance. This is great for providing access to people on varying schedules and all around the world without having to be there constantly.
You may wonder why it makes sense to do an automated webinar when you could simply do a single webinar, record it, and offer access to a video
There are many reasons to use an automated webinar system instead of simply offering a video recording:
- People are much more likely to attend when they feel they are on a time constraint because they don’t want to miss the event. If they are given a link to download a video, they are likely to put off watching the video until “later”, but “later” is likely to never come. People tend to procrastinate unless they have a set timeframe for something.
- People tend to perceive the value of a live webinar as much higher than the value of a single video, even though the information is technically precisely the same.
- A video recording does not allow audience participation of any kind. Some automated webinar scripts allow audience members to chat with one another and also chat with you if you are available at the moment.
- A recorded video cannot be set to play at a specific time so that late attendees believe they are attending a live webinar. However, with some automated webinar software, the video will begin at a specified time, and if people are late or leave and come back, the video will not resume from the same place they left off, giving the impression of a live broadcast.
There are many different automated webinar systems available. Here are a few of the most popular.
>> http://www.EvergreenBusinessSystem.com – The Evergreen Business System is one of the most popular automated webinar systems. At $497. This system delivers a tremendous number of features, most of which cannot be found elsewhere. For an additional $97 monthly fee, you can also run an unlimited number of live webinars using their servers.
>> http://www.StealthSeminar.com – The Stealth Seminar system charges as $97 registration fee (after coupon), and then an additional $69.95 per month. While this is cheaper upfront than the Evergreen Business System, you will find that it lacks some of the features people want in a webinar host. However, it does integrate with almost all major autoresponder systems.
>> http://www.EasyWebinar.com – Easy Webinar is only $297 for a 10-domain license. It is less costly than other systems, but again it doesn’t have quiet as many features as the two listed above.
Planning a Webinar (Structure, Pitching an offer)
Planning the full webinar before it begins is absolutely essential. Without proper planning, you’re likely to end up with long periods of dead air or being unable to answer questions posed by attendees, which can throw off your webinar and cost you conversions/sales.
Webinar Formats
There are several different formats you can choose from for a webinar. Different formats have different benefits, so you may want to use different formats at different times based on your needs.
Let’s take a look at some of the various formats and their benefits and weaknesses:
Single Speaker
In the single speaker format, one person does the complete presentation and may ask the attendees questions or answer theirs.
One major benefit of this particular webinar type is that you won’t have to train multiple people how to use the webinar software. Additionally, you don’t have to worry about timing and coordinating multiple speakers, or having presenters talking over each other answering questions.
The biggest potential drawback of the single speaker format is that sometimes people are reluctant to interact with a single speaker, because they feel it can be a bit intimidating, because the single speaker becomes somewhat of an authority figure. However, this is also potentially beneficial, because if you are seen as an authority figure, people will be more likely to take actions you recommend or request, such as buying a product.
Interview Style
The interview style webinar involves two or more people working together. One person is usually the interviewer, and that person interviews one or more other people.
Some people find that hearing several people at once helps make a webinar more interesting. Also, since the interviewer is asking the other person questions, many times this encourages attendees to ask questions, increasing interactivity.
This means you’ll have to ensure everyone is able to use the webinar software, including the interviewer and all interviewees. You may also run into scheduling conflicts, because you will have to coordinate multiple people to run the webinar.
Moderated Panel
A moderated panel has several people online at the same time with one moderator who ensures only one person can speak at a time. This is done either through the software itself, allowing the moderator to mute everyone who isn’t currently speaking, or in the same way a moderator facilitates a live discussion, by giving individuals permission to speak.
Like the interview style, this type of webinar allows users to hear different perspectives and different voices, which makes the webinar more interesting than a single speaker style.
However, as with an interview style, you’ll have to ensure all parties know how to use the webinar software and be careful of any scheduling conflicts. But perhaps the biggest challenge with this format is keeping the conversation flowing well without people talking over each other. The moderator must take great care to keep things organized.
Interactive
The interactive format requires a single individual to lead the attendees in various activities such as question-and-answer sessions, lessons or other interactive content.
Because this format is extremely interactive, people generally get more out of the webinar. Attendees can ask questions, and even answer questions for other attendees. This can be very helpful if someone asks a question that you don’t know the answer to.
The main problem with this format is that it can really only reasonably accommodate a small number of individuals, because large groups can cause a lot of confusion if everyone is trying to speak at once. You need to be reasonably skilled at running this type of webinar for it to work effectively.
Planning the Presentation
You will need to plan your presentation carefully from start to finish, and you won’t want to deviate from that format too much during your webinar. The reason for this is that once a webinar has been derailed, it can take a long time for it to recover and get back on track, thus making your webinar run over time.
Since people have to plan to be present at a particular time for a webinar event, they generally don’t allot time over that. They may make plans after your webinar, and if it runs over, they may have to leave. Or they may just get bored if the webinar runs too long.
Here are some things you might want to include in your presentation:
- A slide that introduces your webinar, including its purpose, what time it begins, how to use the various webinar functions, and how long the webinar is estimated to last.
- A slide that gives information about the webinar host/presenter and any other presenters, interviewers or interviewees. Include their name, their professional credentials, and a picture if you have one.
- A short presentation of the webinar’s agenda, including the topics to be covered and any other material to be presented.
- Screenshots or videos that demonstrate primary elements of your presentation. You may be able to keep these on your computer and present them as needed, as some webinar software allows you to share your desktop so everyone can see what you’re doing live as you do it. This will let you show videos, slides, screenshots or whatever else you need to display.
Plan Attendees
Keep in mind that a lot of webinar software has hard limits on the number of attendees. This is due to a number of different factors, such as bandwidth, software limitations, etc.
If you know you have a limited number of spots available, be sure to let potential attendees know this in advance. This will help increase the number of people who sign up for your webinar, because it will lend an element of scarcity.
Record the Presentation
It’s a very good idea to record the webinar to allow those who could not be in attendance to view it at a later date. This will increase your conversions, because you will be able to reach more people than could be present due to their own scheduling conflicts or due to the space limitations for the live presentation.
If you’re going to record the webinar, you’ll want to plan this in advance so you can be certain your webinar software allows recording, and to learn how to use the function properly.
Create the Agenda
It is very important to create an agenda with approximate times so that the webinar flows smoothly and doesn’t go too much over time. Remember, if you run over time, you won’t make it to your final sales pitch with some participants, which will severely cut down on conversions.
Your agenda should contain a list of topics that you plan to discuss during the webinar so that you don’t forget any important points.
The agenda should also contain a rough guide for each segment of the presentation, including the order in which speakers will make their presentations, a list of interview questions, etc.
Here’s a sample agenda for a webinar beginning at 6:00 PM:
6:00 – Introduction to the webinar and its presenters.
6:05 – First topic of discussion.
6:15 – Second topic of discussion.
6:25 – Third topic of discussion.
6:35 – Questions from the audience.
6:50 – Product is introduced, letting people know their unanswered questions can be answered by it. This is the sales pitch.
7:00 – Webinar is concluded, attendees are thanked for their presence, and the final sales pitch is made.
Schedule Presenters
If you intend on having any special guests, additional presenters, experts, or interviewees, you need to schedule them well in advance so they are certain they can be present and on time for the webinar.
Don’t forget to schedule all presenters for a trial run, too. This should be done at least once before the day of the webinar in order to ensure everyone knows how to use the software properly and that everyone knows their role and can stick within the time constraints.
Plan a Dry Run
A trial run is absolutely vital for ensuring your webinar goes smoothly. There isn’t much that will kill a webinar’s effectiveness faster than a bunch of people saying “um” and “uh” every couple of minutes because they don’t know what they’re doing or what should happen next.
It’s a good idea to do two or three dry runs, but you must do at least one. The dry run will help ensure everyone knows how to use the webinar software correctly, the order of events, what they plan to say, and how to stay within time constraints.
You won’t be able to plan for things such as user questions as well, but you can anticipate some of the things attendees might ask and be prepared to answer those questions.
The dry run should include, at minimum:
- Practice the webinar introduction, including introducing individual presenters.
- Making sure presenters know how to use the webinar software.
- Check all software and equipment. Make sure the web server is running optimally. Be sure everyone has working headsets and knows how to use them and mute them when necessary.
- Go over the complete agenda with all participants. Do a run-through of all presenters’ presentations, including visuals such as screenshots and videos.
Fine-Tuning Your Pitch
The most important part of your webinar is obviously your pitch. This pitch must be as finely tuned as possible before the webinar begins, and it must contain the perfect blend of selling versus informing.
If the product is yours, you can be a little more aggressive with your sales pitch. People will expect this if you’re selling your own product, so they won’t really be upset.
However, if you’re selling an affiliate product, people are likely to be rather skeptical about the product if you’re selling too hard. Instead, try to focus on talking about why you personally like the product rather than just saying, “Buy! Buy! Buy!”
Here are some things you might want to include in your sales pitch:
- A few of the most important features of the product
- The best benefits of the product (Remember, benefits are different from features. Features would be things like a server’s bandwidth or hard drive size. Benefits would be no loss of sales due to bandwidth limitations or never running out of server space for critical backups.)
- What the product has done for you personally
- Why you believe everyone would want the product
Be careful not to oversell the product or people will smell the sales pitch a mile away and won’t feel it is genuine. The more personal it seems, and the more you relate to them what it has done for you, the more people will want to buy it.
Pre-Qualifying Participants
Something you may want to do if your webinar is very limited is to pre-screen potential attendees to be sure they understand the product you are presenting, its basic features and its price. You don’t want valuable webinar spots being taken by people who would have absolutely no interest in the product you’re selling or wouldn’t be able to afford it even if they were.
Thus, before your signup form, you might want to include a short survey asking people questions that pre-qualify them for your webinar.
Some example questions for a weigh loss webinar might include:
- Are you interested in losing 50, 75, even 100 pounds or more in the next six months?
- Have you tried other weight loss products and failed?
- Are you sick of weight loss systems that try to charge you a monthly fee on and on, yet they never work?
- If you could pay a one-time fee of just $497 to lose all the weight you want, and be guaranteed success, would you be interested?
This will ensure participants are both interested and willing to pay the cost of the product.
Finally
Webinars can be extremely profitable if care is taken with the setup, presentation, and pitch. Remember that they are best used for pitching high-value products that pay a larger commission in order to take advantage of the limited nature of most webinar software.
Remember, you can continue making money long after your webinar has ended by allowing others to view the recording of it. But don’t forget that your webinar’s effectiveness will diminish significantly if you only offer a standard video stream or download of your broadcast.
Instead, consider using one of the automated webinar systems that make your broadcast seem like a live event. This will increase urgency and ensure that more people will view your recorded webinar and take action, too.
I wish you the best of luck with your webinars, and I hope you find wild success with all your future webinars!
Good luck!
Read Later - DOWNLOAD THIS POST AS PDF >> Click...
by Cindy Donovan | Webinar & High Ticket Marketing
Does the topic of money make your mouth dry and your hands sweat? Do you dread that point in a conversation when someone says, “So what do you charge?”
You’re not alone. Most of us have difficulty talking about money—especially when it comes to quoting prices for our own work. But if you’re going to be successful in business, you have to get over it.
Practice. The first rule for declaring your prices with confidence is simply to practice. Talk to yourself in the shower. Tell your dog what your rates are. Stand in front of your mirror and say, “I charge $XXX.00 per hour.”
The more you say your rates out loud (not in your head) the more natural it will be for you.
Smile. Even if you’re on the phone or writing an email, smile when you say your rates. Your tone of voice changes when you smile (as does the “tone” of your typing), and that tone can convey confidence and authority, not to mention professionalism.
Avoid being wishy-washy. Listen to yourself as you speak to potential clients. Do you say things like, “Well, normally I charge…” or “Actually, my rates are…” or “Do you think that $XX.00 will work for you?”
These (and others like them) are all wishy-washy ways of talking that do not instill confidence in your client, and worse, they make you sound like you don’t believe in yourself.
Rather than squeaking out a timid, “Um, I charge, like $1,000 per month,” straighten your back, smile, and say, “My rate for VIP coaching is $1,000 per month. Where should I send your invoice?” And then…
Be silent. When we’re nervous or feeling intimidated, we tend to talk. We want to fill the silence with something, anything, just to avoid having to sit there uncomfortably and wonder what the other person is thinking.
But guess what? He or she is just as uncomfortable with the silence, and psychologically, the one who speaks first is at a disadvantage. So when you’re talking price, avoid the urge to fill the silence (especially because you’re most likely to try to justify your pricing) and let your potential client take time to respond.
Will speaking with confidence always land you a new client? No. But being able to share your pricing in a clear voice will help potential clients know that you’re confident in your skills, and consequently, that you are the right coach for them.
by Cindy Donovan | Marketing, Webinar & High Ticket Marketing
Sell High-Priced Packages – Lets You Have Your Cake… And Eat It!
It’s a must if you want to know be a coach or service provider whose actually charging what you’re really worth
It’s that all-too-common belief that “I am not a sales person.” Combine that with a healthy dose of “It’s rude to discuss money,” and you can see why it’s just easier to keep your rates low.
It’s time to think of your services from a different angle. Not only will you see things in a clearer light, but being able to sell high-priced packages suddenly won’t feel so…salesy.
Here’s how traditional pricing discussions go:
You talk to a potential client, and you explain what you can offer, how your coaching or service works, what he or she can expect (how many calls/emails, phases of work, length of contract), etc. And then you say, “My rate is $XXX.00.”
Your client either says yes, no or (the kiss of death) maybe.
Let’s turn that around, and rather than focus on what he or she will get from YOU, take a look at what she will achieve when she hires you.
For a business coach, this is easy. Talk money. How much more profit will your client make when she hires you? If your coaching fee is $1,000 per month, but you can show her how to increase her sales by $3,000 per month, then your price is inconsequential. She’ll earn it back three times over, not only while you’re actively coaching her, but for the rest of her business life.
Who wouldn’t jump on that with both feet?
What you’re doing here is not talking about the cost of your coaching, but rather the cost of not hiring you. Because if she doesn’t work with you, she’s losing $3,000 per month.
What about other kinds of coaches though? The same applies, you just have to find a way to show your clients the cost of their inaction.
If you’re a life coach, inaction (to your potential client) might mean years of feeling unhappy and unfulfilled. Imagine what it might be worth to your client to lift that depressing burden forever?
The same goes for health and wellness coaches. Can you add 10 years to the life of an unhealthy, overweight man? That’s priceless.
What about dating coaches? For someone who’s been unlucky in love, in and out of one bad relationship after another, the promise of a man (or woman) who will love and cherish them is worth nearly any price.
You just have to paint the picture and you’ll be on your way to being able to sell high-priced packages like a pro
What will life/business/love look like without your coaching services, and what can it look like with you? Once they see the difference, pricing becomes nearly irrelevant.
Read Later - DOWNLOAD THIS POST AS PDF >> Click...
by Cindy Donovan | Webinar & High Ticket Marketing
In this episode I interview Walter Bayliss, creator of multiple highly successful software products like RepWarn, Hydravid. He’s been consistently seeing great results with webinars, so much so that he even developed his own webinar platform, Webinar JEO, which was released in March 2016.
If you’d like to listen to the entire interview you can do that below – or, read the transcript.
Walter, thank you for being here.
Walt Bayliss: Hey, thanks for having me on the show. It’s a pleasure.
Cindy Donovan: Before we dive into all the good stuff, this is actually the very first episode of 7 Figure Furnace and also the first in our series about webinars, focusing on webinar pricing and relevant webinar related awesomeness. Maybe we could just quickly cover a couple of basics. Walt, do you reckon you could tell our listeners what is a webinar and why are they so awesome?
Walt Bayliss: Yeah, sure, absolutely. A webinar is a seminar held on the web. If you understand what a seminar is, a seminar is somebody that’s got a message to share, it might be coaching, it might be training, it might be information of any kind. Take that audience and put them on the internet. Of course with technology we can have an audience that’s spread anywhere across the world and you can communicate to people, like we are, in separate countries right now, communicating with live time voices chat and be able to do the seminar on the web. That’s a webinar.
Why are they so awesome? Well, because the web itself lends itself to a lot of impersonalisations. What do I mean by that? You go to a webpage, you’re looking at the webpage, making a decision on a product, perhaps buying that product. You’re researching, you’re trying to find something out. Even if you’re doing a training course, you’re online, you’re reading through the PDFs, you’re watching video training, that kind of stuff. There’s no personal interaction. Why are webinars so awesome? Because it allows people to communicate in live time and adds that personalization to the whole experience again.
What we end up with is this interactive experience and rather than a message and a decision, so I put out a message and whoever sees that message makes a decision about it. Rather than that being a very non-engaged loop, with a webinar when you put out a message you have the opportunity to get live feedback, you can communicate with people, you can make sure that any questions that haven’t been clearly explained are answered. Yeah, you end up with a much higher level of engagement….
Cindy: Yeah, so it’s really about engagement and interaction and getting a face for your brand and your company and the product that you’re
promoting. Walt: Yeah, definitely.
Cindy: I know that you’re right, internet really does give a whole lot of anonymity. You have products where you have support desks and
some of the stuff that people send into support desks, I know for sure that nobody would come and say some of this stuff to your face because they assume that the internet is out there and it’s something that … We’re not real people. When you put a face on it people want to buy and they want to connect.
Walt: From a purchasing point of view, it makes communicating the message of the product a lot easier. If you’re doing a demonstration of a product online, people can actually see it working in live time, they don’t have to guess does it do that, doesn’t it, and make assumptions about that product. The buying experience is a lot higher. There’s of course lots of different types of webinars, as you know. There’s training webinars, there’s coaching, there’s sales, there’s lots of different environments where webinars work.
Certainly from a sales perspective, if a customer can see and engage with a face, a person who is talking through the sale itself, the product, what it does and how it works, then they don’t have to make these assumptions of what they think the product does. They can see it, they can walk through it with the creator of the product, they can ask questions and they can make sure they feel comfortable about their purchase.
Cindy: Yeah, that’s really good. In this podcast, I want to really talk about price points. What have you found to be the best converting price point and how do you come to that decision?
Walt: The first thing that I’ve got there from an answer to that question is to make it a no-brainer. To make it a no-brainer. When you’re looking at a product, you’re seeing the value of it. If it gets to the point of the pricing and it causes either one of these two reactions, the first reaction being, “Oooohh,” then it’s too high. The second reaction being, “Really?” Then it’s too low. I’ve run webinars, and thanks very much for the very kind words in your introduction. One of the things you said was “getting stellar conversions every time.” That hasn’t happened by accident.
We’ve run a webinar, and to give you a real example, we’ve run a webinar with a product at $2,000, okay, which is quite a high-end product, and we converted off the clock. We did an incredible amount of sales of that particular product. I think we did over $160,000 in sales on the night of that webinar, right, so on a $2,000 product. The same product, repacked with a different pricing, what we were trying to do was get more people involved, we actually re- ran that webinar pricing was offered at a $1 trial for 30 days. People would not engage with it at all. Couldn’t you believe it? A $2,000 piece of software, people were falling over themselves to buy it, but when we even offered them a trial like, “Hey, it’s only going to cost you $1 and then if you like it in 30 days then you can pay.”
Nothing. It was like crickets, it was just so unbelievable and the reason was the value, Cindy. We realized the fact that people saw us in 90 minutes go through something amazing, they could see the value, they could feel it. They knew that what they were looking at was of incredible value. When you put a price tag in front that’s too low, it makes people go, “Oh. Maybe it’s not quite as good as I thought it would be.” The other note that I’ve got there on pricing, how do you set the price, is I actually wrote a blog post on this, what I term is “making sure that both sides are richer as a result.”
What do I mean by that? If I sell a product and happy to take the money, and then at the end of the experience of buying that product the people who have paid the money aren’t happy with the result, then I’m richer financially, but they are poorer. If you craft your product in such a way that no matter what it costs, the value far exceeds that cost … Let me give you an example. If I look at a new car, for example, and say this car is $30,000. If you buy the car and you love it so much, it’s so great, it gives you years of good service, it’s the most comfortable, it’s easy to drive, it’s the best car you ever had, then that $30,000 has been well worth it for the lifetime of that car. In the other side, if you bought the car and at $30,000 and it gives you no end of trouble and it’s always in at the shop, it has a weird judder when you’re driving and a bad smell and blah blah blah, then you don’t have that $30,000 worth of experience.
What I talk about is make sure that both sides of the transaction are richer as a result. If I sell you this for $100, I really want to make sure that you are richer as a result of buying it; you’ve got more value, you’re able to do more things because you bought that particular product. Both sides need to be richer. The seller of the product richer from a financial perspective, certainly, that they’ve been able to sell their product and put money in the bank, but the buyers of the product to be richer as a result of buying. They’ve got more value than the cost that they’ve outlaid. Those two points, making it a no-brainer, so it’s an easy decision to make to buy that product. That doesn’t give you a price level because everything is going to be different, and then making sure that both sides of the transaction are richer.
If you follow those two steps, you will end up with a price point that is both easy to swallow from a consumer’s point of view, and gives incredible value. Then it’s an easy transaction. As we’ve sold products, I think the most expensive product I’ve sold on webinar where the webinar pricing has been $5,000, 4,997 as they do in marketing circles. The cheapest product we’ve sold on a webinar, specifically where webinar pricing has been that $1 trial, which went nowhere. As a direct sale, I would say at $100. The conversions pretty much stay the same depending on the value of the offer. It’s a matter of making sure that what you’ve got delivers that value, what is it worth to a consumer and is it an easy decision for them to make. It it’s a $100 product, don’t try and sell it for $500. Conversely, if it’s a $5,000 product don’t try and sell it for 100.
Cindy: Right, right. I see people doing single payments, multi-payments, as you mentioned, trial payments. What’s your opinion on whether to hit them up for a single payment or spread that out so if it’s a $1,000 product do it in instalments. What’s your experience there?
Walt: Again, it depends on the product and of course on the pricing of it. What I’ve seen is a great technique, and I’ve seen this done by some of the best people in the industry, is they’ll do the single payment on the webinar, so they’re talking about … Let’s pick a price point just for the sake of the argument, say that it’s at 997, that’s a $1,000 product. They’re talking about their $1,000 product, they’re building the value, they’ve show that actually if you buy this you’re getting this bonus and this bonus and you get this and you get that. You’re actually getting $10,000 worth of stuff, it’s going to cost you 1,000. Okay, great, it’s an easy decision, you get loads of value, it’s $1,000, $1,000, $1,000. You’re pitching that single price point on the webinar and then on the replay as well.
One of the most important things about a webinar, and especially in today, we’ve seen that the sequence, and I know that some of your 7 Figure Furnace guys are going to talk about the sequence of webinars later on in the series, so stay tuned you guys. We found in a sequence that of course we have a lead up: “there’s a webinar happening on this date, register now, it’s happening tomorrow, make sure you’re registered, it’s on in an hour.” Getting that build up towards the webinar. Then the webinar pitch, and then the most important or the biggest part of the sales come in the follow-up. Follow-up emails in terms of “did you miss the live webinar? Come and join on the replay” and then talking about the offer that was presented on the webinar.
What we’ve really found works well is you pitch the single price point on the webinar, it’s $1,000, $1,000, $1,000, it’s $10,000 worth of value, it’s $1,000, $1,000. You’re driving for as much of that big price set point as you can. Then towards the end of the replay sequence is when you start dropping in a payment plan option. Okay, so it’s $1,000, $1,000, $1,000, come and watch the replay, it’s $1,000. Come and watch the replay tomorrow, it’s $1,000. We’re closing the offer in 48 hours and because I know that a lot of you want to get involved but don’t have $1,000 with you, we’re going to offer you the opportunity to have three payments of 397.
That’s what I’ve found works really well is present the product as it’s priced at the time of the webinar, and then try and get as much as you can from a sales perspective, and then drop in the multi-pay option towards the end. That’s from my personal perspective what we’ve seen works really well.
Cindy: Yeah, well that totally makes sense. It helps people just to get rid of any of those last hanging on problems, issues, to stop them from actually buying.
Walt: For the people that have bought on the single price, you want to make sure that they feel special. There will be people that, they’re on the webinar, they had to scrape to get that money together, it wasn’t easy money for them, so they’ve outlaid the money. The last thing you want to do is make them feel like they should have waited. If it’s $1,000, make sure that the payment plan is higher, so in other words, if I pay the $1,000 I’ve actually got the best deal, but if I can’t quite get the money together, three payments of 397 actually works out to be an extra couple hundred dollars more to spread it over that time. If you’ve paid the money upfront you feel good that you’ve saved that money in the long term. You want to make sure that the payment plan costs a little bit more at the end.
Cindy: Yeah, exactly, and it’s going to stop people getting upset and getting refunds and feeling ripped off.
Walt: Exactly.
Cindy: When you’re putting together products or you’re finding products to sell on webinars, how do you find the ones that are going to sell? Do you have a gut feeling when you look at a product and you go, yeah, this is going to sell really well at this price. Or do you find some that are just … you know you need to sell it or you might feel like you need to sell it but you know that it’s going to be a tough sell. How do you separate which ones are awesome and which ones are going to be tough?
Walt: As you do it more and more, so for anybody that’s watching and listening to this, as you do this more and more you get to know
people in the industry. One of the ways of me answering then is with trust that the product creates. I’ve done a lot of work with Damien Zamora, for example, from GoMobile. When Damien hits me up and says, “Hey, Walt, XYZ product,” I know that Damien’s staff always delivers an amazing value, and so that’s an easy decision for me to make. It is a gut feel, really. You’ve got to know the person, for a start. Who are they, what are they, what are their business values, what do their customers say about them? It’s really quick to find that kind of stuff on Facebook, very quick search of them. See the comments on the wall and you get a pretty good understanding pretty quickly.
Also, see if you can find testimonials from previous products. Are the customers going to have a good experience? Make sure you get a copy of it yourself. If something is being sold and you’re representing that something by setting up a webinar for your people to come and listen, make sure you get a copy, see what it is and understand it. If you get the buzz when you look at the product, when you look at the product and go, “Wow, this is awesome,” then other people will feel the same way. If you look at a product and go, “Yeah, I’m just not that sure about it,” it’s not the right fit for you. You’re not going to be able to confidently stand up and talk to people about it.
I’ve done sales; before we started our own business, I was working in corporate sales at a high boardroom level, we’re talking billion dollar deals, that kind of stuff. If you couldn’t legitimately stand in front and say, “This is the best decision that you could possibly make as a company,” if you don’t feel it, there’s absolutely no way that the sale will be made. You have to do the introduction on a webinar, you have to stand behind the person that’s presenting, and if you don’t feel it, don’t do the webinar.
Cindy: Yeah. I know it can be tempting because once you start getting your reputation around and people start coming and pitching you ideas and that kind of thing, it can look like it’s something that you can just quickly, easily make a bit of money from, so there’s that temptation there to just go and jump on it. It’s really important to keep integrity and make sure that you’re promoting and what you’re sticking your name behind is going to be something that you can actually get excited about and lend your name to. Yeah, these are really good points.
Walt: It’s not an exact science either as well, Cindy. Sometimes you might look, you might think it’s great, you might have done your research, you’ve done everything right and then … it…
Cindy: It doesn’t … right.
Walt: It didn’t work or something wasn’t quite the way it should have been. If that happens, your best point of action is, again, to email
out to your people and say, “Hey guys, sorry, we understand there are problems, let’s work together to solve it.” Ninety percent of the time, if you follow what we just said, do research and make sure that you’re understanding what you’re putting in front of people, because it is your name behind it, then you should be fine, be doing okay. It’s easy to find products that fit, and again you can do something as simple as a Google search, whatever your market is.
For example, you mentioned RepWarn, which is our reputation management software, and Hydravid, which is our video marketing software. If I Google either one of the terms around that, so if I talk about reputation management, I put that into Google, there will be companies that pop up that have not competing software but maybe ancillary services, and that’s a perfect match. I can reach out to them and see if we can do some cross-selling between our two companies. The same with the video marketing. There’s an incredible industry that fringes on video marketing and as long as you have a product that’s noncompetitive but aligns with what you’re both trying to achieve, then that’s an excellent opportunity to do something together.
Cindy: On most of your webinars you are selling software; I don’t think I’ve seen you selling training or coaching or that kind of thing on webinars, it’s mostly software, am I right?
Walt: [inaudible 00:17:36] I have in the past, I have done webinars where we’ve been talking about a particular training program and I suggest you get involved with the training program because it’s amazing, and the training program is a 12 week session with our presenter at such and such. I have done it, from my personal experience, and everybody is going to be different, it’s easier for me to show software because that’s my space. It’s easier for me to say, “Look what this can do for you,” click the button and wow, rather than talk about “I believe that you’re here in your evolution and by going through this training course you’re going to be there at the end.”
It’s easy for me, but again if I look at some of our colleagues and well known people online, they equally talk about software as well as training or as well as training programs or courses or seminars. I’ve seen webinars pitching live events. You come to a webinar, 90 minutes or an hour, meeting someone specific, and at the end what they’re talking about is an event somewhere in the world and a special offer on tickets. There’s so many different products that are available for sale on webinar. Personally I stay in software because I understand it and it’s easy to see a result. Again, if somebody came to me with the right training program, I would for sure talk to my people about it.
Cindy: Yeah. When you’re demonstrating software in a webinar, do you have any tricks that you can share with our listeners on how to
really make sure that that demonstration comes across slick, how to actually present it so that it’s going to sell?
Walt: Yeah, sure. The first way to answer that is by not launching into a demonstration from the first moment that you’re on camera, or the first moment that the webinar is on. Why? Because the people that are there, they want to answer the first question of why are we here for a start. There needs to be an explanation about a problem, so we’re here to talk about this is a problem, this is a problem in this particular marketplace or in this sector of the community, or yourself. This is a problem that we have all seen. Can we agree that this is a problem? Yes, okay. Now I can acknowledge that my audience sees that this is a problem for themselves or for a section of the world. Now that I know that that’s a problem, this is a known solution. Our solution is we follow these steps, we do this, this and this, and this solves that solution. Okay, now let me show you some software that takes all of that middle part and makes it into a five minute exercise instead of a five month exercise.
You need to be able to set the ground before you fire up the software. Once you’ve done that, so that comes in … Again, I know that your 7 Figure Furnace guys have got how to structure a webinar as one that they’re going to [inaudible 00:20:34], so again, guys, make sure you listen, it’s hugely valuable. Once you’ve got the structure and you’ve walked through the problem and the identification and you’re actually demonstrating, how do you make sure that goes smoothly? First of all, practice. That goes without saying. Make sure you know what you’re showing better than anybody else in the world. Make sure you’re the best at it, so that’s number one.
Number two, there’s often things in software that take time to run. It might be I’ve clicked on this button, and in effect what happens is the software goes off and does all of this amazing stuff, and what I’m going to do is come back tomorrow and get the results. It’s really hard to show that on webinar. If your software has components that take time to run, that need to go and do a lot of research or whatever, do that before the webinar. You will demonstrate setting it up, and then you will quite simply say, “While that’s working, here’s the one I ran yesterday, and here’s the results from the one I ran yesterday.”
Make sure that you’ve got the results easily demonstrable as well, easily visible for the people that are on the webinar so they don’t have to sit there with ten minutes worth of pained silence while the software does its automated tricks; because even if it only takes ten minutes, actually, let’s be even more clear. Even if it takes only five minutes, okay, it’s a pained silence.
Cindy: That’s a long time.
Walt: If you think about five minutes to set up. There’s a lot of software that’s instant, of course. Click this and bang, it’s done. Do this, it takes you to the next step. If there’s any steps of your software program specifically that take time to run, then make sure that that’s well-prepared in advance.
Cindy: Yeah, absolutely, and you don’t have to go digging around for links. Make sure that you have everything ready and that it’s good to go.
Walt: Definitely, exactly right.
Cindy: Yeah. I know we do, as you’ve alluded to, in 7 Figure Furnace coming up we’re going to be interviewing quite a few people who
are going to drill down into other topics for your listeners. Specifically this month we’re just covering webinars, so we just want to make sure that you’ve got everything equipped for webinars and to make sure that you’re doing them the best that you can. Before we head out, Walt, do you have any last-minute tips, action points, or anything that people who are really wanting to just dive into webinars can take and implement today?
Walt: Yeah, definitely. Webinars are an incredible way of making money. They really are, they work so fantastically well. Even if you’ve never
done one before, you’d really like to because obviously we’re talking about money. Who doesn’t want some more, right? If you’re sitting there thinking to yourself I’d really like to but I’ve never done before and I’m super scared. What the great news is is that if you are beginning by bringing an expert to your audience, okay, they are doing the presentation, all right. First of all let me say that the expert, the person who’s doing the presenting, loves that opportunity. If you’ve got the audience, they have the product and you can put them together, that’s a really welcome introduction from that product creator’s point of view.
Cindy: That’s quite easy. If you don’t mind, I’ll just jump in here; because a lot of people, like you’re alluding to here, a lot of people have
products that they’ve put in all the works, like you for example. If you can get 300 people, if you have a mailing list or you have subscribers or somewhere to connect or drive traffic and get people into a webinar room, there are tons of people like Walt that will want to just come in and sell your stuff for you. Often you guys are paid 50%, is usually …
Walt: Absolutely, absolutely. If you’ve got the audience, and there’s a billion training courses on building audiences and there’s lots of
things that you can do to drive traffic towards any webinar sign-up page, you just need to define the audience and run some ads to it. If you can bring the audience, I guess my point being, don’t feel scared about setting up a webinar because if the person you’re bringing, they’re going to do all of the hard work. If you’ve never done it before, switch on your webcam and just, as Cindy did at the beginning of this podcast, “Hi, my name is Cindy,” or of course whoever is listening you would probably use your own name, that would be smarter.
“Hi, this is me. Today we’re going to be talking about blah blah blah, and I’d like to introduce you to somebody who has been an expert in that area, and this is the person that I’m introducing. They’re going to talk to you for the next 30, 40, 50 minutes about A, B and C, and by the end of it you’re going to have this in your toolkit. Now I’d like to hand over to that person.” If you can do a professional introduction, your job is done and yeah, you can earn up to 50% of every single sale. Imagine if you’re selling a 500 or 1,000 or even $2,000 product, you’re earning 50% of the commission by doing two things: A, bringing the audience, and B, doing a professional introduction. Everything else is taken care of for you.
Don’t be scared of webinars, in fact, go out and speak to some people. I’ve always used a bit of a mantra that action [Q 00:25:56] is for you. If you go out and you’re dead set scared and the first thing that you do is speak to someone and say, “Hey, would you like to run a webinar to my audience for your product?” I’m pretty sure you’re going to get some positive responses, so you don’t have to have that fear of rejection. If you’ve got the audience then people are going to be happy to speak to you. If you don’t have the audience, make that your first goal. Go and build an audience about a specific topic. Once you have the audience then you’ll be easily able to find a webinar to suit.
Cindy: You know the funny thing, even if you totally goof, this “professional” introduction, it won’t really matter because people are going to forget. You’re on camera for maybe 30 seconds to a
minute doing the introduction, and then you hand over to someone that’s very confident and great with the audience, they do this a lot of times. Even if you totally screw up the introduction, it’s not the end of the world either, is it.
Walt: What we’ve just done is take away every reason why you shouldn’t be buying.
Cindy: There you go.
Walt: You can rough up the introduction and still do extremely well in a webinar, which I’ve done and which we know works, then you’re in good company, you’ll be fine. Cindy: Absolutely.
Walt: Just get it done. Yeah, my tip would be just get it done. Cindy: Just go for it.
Cindy: All right. Thank you so much, Walt, for coming in here and sharing so many gems. I hope our listeners have had a lot of great notes to take and will be able to move on in webinars. Thanks heaps for joining us.
Walt: My pleasure, great to see you. Cindy: All right, bye.
