Living in a supply closet to multi-millionaire in a few years... Learn the incredible story (and coaching funnel) of the impressive Akbar Sheikh...
Steve Larsen:
What's going on everyone? This is Steve Larsen. You're listening to another fantastic episode of Sales Funnel Radio. This episode, we've got a special guest on here for you, his name is Akbar Sheikh. He's going to be representing the author/speaker/coach/consultant category of funnels.
Now, this is actually the biggest category of ... probably people online actually in general, who are entrepreneurs. So, this represents a lot of you guys. Now, as we start going through this, I want you to know before I introduce the guest, before we start the episode ... Akbar has made many millions, and he is more than qualified to be on this podcast thing and teach us.
What you'll notice though in this interview is, how much he doesn't focus on the funnel. Meaning ... the funnel is important, the funnel is there. You have to have it, there's elements ... every single piece he has thought through action by action, piece by piece of what he has inside of his funnel.
It's very important obviously, and he's going to go through those things with you. But you'll notice as I go through the interview, more importantly, is his mindset.
I'm not going to lie, when I first started going through reading marketing books, and business books, I kind of thought that that was a little bit of a frilly thing like, "Ah, you've got to have a great mindset, mindset, mindset," but it's the way that he approaches it that is so key I think to his success with this. It's fantastic, probably one of the most humbling stories and beginnings I've ever heard in my life.
So anyways, sit back and enjoy the episode, but take key awareness of what it is that he's teaching you to do with your brain, very different look at this. Honestly, probably a more developed theology on what it takes as far as the right mindset than most entrepreneurs out there.
Anyways, I hope that you guys enjoy the episode, and let's get right into it.
Announcer:
Welcome to Sales Funnel Radio, where you'll learn marketing strategies to grow your online business using today's best internet sales funnels. Now, here's your host Steve Larsen.
Steve Larsen:
All right. Hey, today we have a very special guest on ... Frankly, I'm excited that you're all here and I got to hit the actual record button, because I actually want to talk to him probably more than anyone right now. I'm really excited for what he's going to share.
This is going to be the author/speaker/coach/consultant segment.
This is part of the six part series we have going on right now, and there's no one else I can think of who is probably more of an expert, but also extremely hard to find to be honest. He's very very humble, he's a bestselling author as of late, which is awesome, has multiple "Two Comma Club" awards, if not physically in hand and well deserved.
I'm very excited for you guys to all hear ... His name is Akbar Sheik, how are you doing my friend?
Akbar Sheikh:
What's up Steve? Doing great, phenomenal, how about you?
Steve Larsen:
Oh, doing so good, living the dream. Thanks for getting up early and do this.
Akbar Sheikh:
My pleasure.
Steve Larsen:
A crazy schedule, that's for sure. Hey, I first heard your story ... You're part of the "Two Comma Club" coaching program, right?
Akbar Sheikh:
I am a "Two Comma Club" member, yeah.
Steve Larsen:
That's right. So, you're actually a member itself. I see your award all over the place, which is awesome, really exciting. But, I heard your backstory, and how you got to where you are now, and it was frankly extremely humbling. A huge reminder to myself, and I think for everyone else who's going to listen to this. You can do this, it's really not rocket science.
I love the story, and without me kind of botching it up or anything else, do you mind sharing some of that story?
Akbar Sheikh:
Yeah no, I'd love to Steve. It's a wild story actually, and I'll kind of just try give you the highlights. The reality is, as a human being, I ... Okay here's what I believe: I believe that everyone is consisted of several orbs. I believe you have your physical health, your mental health, your spiritual health, and your big "Why?"
These are the four magic orbs I believe that create a human being...
With me, right? A few years ago, all these orbs were pulverized. In other words, I was 60 pounds overweight, I was a fast food junkie, they'd have my name on the parking spots at Burger King, Wendy's, all these places.
Steve Larsen:
I would have no idea, 60 pounds overweight, no way.
Akbar Sheikh:
Yeah, I was 60 pounds overweight. Mentally I was ... Actually, I don't really talk about this too much, but I had crippling anxiety.
Steve Larsen:
Sure.
Akbar Sheikh:
Crippling, debilitating anxiety, which took over my life. I was in a completely toxic relationship, I hated what I was doing with a passion, and I didn't have a big "Why?"
Steve Larsen:
Right.
Akbar Sheikh:
All of this combined, and I wasn't very spiritual, and stuff like that. I didn't pray or meditate. All of this combined broke me as a person. I literally ended up in the hospital half dead. I literally ended up in the hospital half dead from frankly, partying too much. I was just a party animal to be honest with you, and I should have died. But, I truly believe God saves me, okay?
I took advantage, I took advantage of this second chance at life, and I overnight dropped all my bad habits cold turkey, by the way. I lost 60 pounds, and I did it all the clean way. I took my name off the parking stickers at McDonald's, I stopped going to fast food, stopped drinking sodas, I just started eating clean bro. I just started eating organic and cleanly.
If I couldn't spell it, I'm not going to eat it. If it contains more than three ingredients, I'm not going to eat it. Just some light exercise.
Honestly, that's the thing. It's not complicated frankly, but it just ... I'll talk about what that one magic thing that it takes to do these things.
Steve Larsen:
It seems to be the thing that pushes over to the funnel area, and your personal life, and whatever it is, you've done [crosstalk 00:06:25] now.
Akbar Sheikh:
It is, yeah. So, I lost that weight, I got out of that toxic relationship into a healthy one, I started meditating and becoming spiritual. I started praying and stuff. So, I completely ... I just changed, and I was on the road to recovery now. My anxiety was still there, because one orb was still malfunctioning. That was my big "Why?" What am I doing here? What do I do on a day-to-day basis? Why am I here? All that.
I was on the road to recovery now, I had obviously lost everything, and I didn't really have much frankly, because I hated ... You're not going to be very productive if you hate what you do, right? At this point, I migrated West to my birthplace, which is San Francisco.
Steve Larsen:
Okay.
Akbar Sheikh:
No money at all. I'm taking a tour by this lady of an office building. Now, I have no idea why I'm taking a tour of an office building, I don't even have any money for an office, but I'm just on this tour.
At the end of the tour, there's this ... Honestly, I'm not trying to be dramatic, but there was this dark corner, and there was this door over there and I'm like, "What's that?"
She's looking at me like I'm some weirdo and she's like, "Uh, that's the electrical room." I don't know what came into me, but it was kind of like divine intervention and I was like, "Hey, can I see that?" Again, she's looking at me like, "Okay, this dude is really weird, should I call the police?" She's like, "All right, fine whatever."
She opens the door, it's an electrical room. It's the size of a big walk-in closet, and it's got no windows, there's wires and stuff, and exposed vents. I'm like, "What do you with this?" She's like, "We house phone wires for the building." I was like, "Dude," and I just told her my situation. Honestly, I just ... and listen to this, I opened up my chest, and I opened up my heart, and I didn't try any cheesy sales language, I didn't try any marketing stuff.
I just looked at her in the eye, and was completely vulnerable to her, and I just told her my story. I said, "Hey look, I almost died. I'm trying to recover, I'm fixing up my life. I'm doing a good job, please help me. Let me live here." You know what? It worked. She was an old school hippy, and she had mercy on me, and she let me live there.
Steve Larsen:
Wow.
Akbar Sheikh:
I had no hot water, I had no showers, I had no windows, okay? If I wanted to shave or something, I'd have to get a pot of water, put it on my little plate heater, heat up the water, and kind of wash up. You know what I'm saying?
Steve Larsen:
Right.
Akbar Sheikh:
So, I lived like that for a while. All right cool, now I got a place. Again, where is my big "Why?" Now, everyday I am searching, everyday I'm ... everyday. You know what? Funny enough, I turned to Craigslist. Everyday I'm looking on Craigslist, I'm just looking for something, some sign, something to do, something "Why?" Something to do with my life. Everyday, everyday, everyday, past days, days, days, days.
Finally, I bump into the worldwide web. I bumped into [inaudible 00:09:29] marketing, and it was like this, "Ah" moment where I saw some website that was selling ... It was informational products. It was digital products like motivational books and stuff like that.
Steve Larsen:
Yeah.
Akbar Sheikh:
Honestly dude, I felt like Neo from the Matrix. I just saw everything for the first time, and I'm like ... Everything was crystal ... This is the first time I'm exposed to this, and I just saw everything crystal clear. I'm like, "Wait a minute, I know why that call to action button is there. I know why that button is red. I know why that testimony is there. I know why they have big smiley picture there."
It just all became crystal clear to me. I'm like, "This is freaking genius, this is what I'm going to do."
To get involved in this business, there was obviously some seed money, some startup costs, and it was around about $2,000. I had obviously nothing to my name, I had one possession to my name, and it was some rinky dinky hoopty car, a 1986 Mercedes. It was actually banana exterior, peanut butter interior, but it ran like it shouldn't have ran.
It was worth $2,000 barely on a good day, and I sold it, and people thought I was nuts. They're like, "Dude, you're homeless, you have no money, how are you going to get around to try to get a job? How are you going to go get food? What are you doing? You're cashing in your last chip." No, you know what? Yeah, I am you're right, because I'm burning the ship.
This stuff works, because I see all these people's working for, why can't it work for me? It will, but I'm going all in, and I'm going to make this work.
I cashed in my last chip, I bought into it, and boom. Over night, now I'm an internet business man. I was like, "Yep, here we go, homeless. I'm going to go live on my yacht pretty soon," and this and that, right?
One month goes by bro, and I'm pounding the phone every day, using the internet, getting leads, trying to make sales over the phone, high ticket sales, did not make a single sale.
So, I cashed in all my chips, I got no money, I got no car, I'm living in a closet, a month goes by, not a single sale.
Steve Larsen:
Wow.
Akbar Sheikh:
This is where 99% of the people quit, but I didn't. I didn't. I said, "Listen, wait a minute now," because at this point, you know what happens? Most people, "Oh, the system is stupid, this is a scam [inaudible 00:12:07], I'm going to go get my job." I'm not mocking anybody by that, we're just having some fun.
Steve Larsen:
Sure.
Akbar Sheikh:
At that point Steve, I'm on the phone every day, so the system is working, it's me that is not closing them. I tweaked my script, and when I did that ... Instead of blaming the system, I blamed myself, and I tweaked my approach, boom, first sale $500 bucks.
Steve Larsen:
Oh man.
Akbar Sheikh:
Second month total sales, 1,000 bucks. Third month, $2,000, then five, then 10, then 20, then 30, and on, and on, and on. I became a top one percent earner in that $186 billion dollar industry, and it all started from that closet.
Steve Larsen:
Wow, amazing.
Akbar Sheikh:
And the fact that I just would not give up like, "I don't care, this is happening."
Steve Larsen:
When did you hit to the point wherever you're like, "Hey, maybe I should go get a real place to live? Can I get one with a shower?"
Akbar Sheikh:
Yeah I know. When I started making money.
Steve Larsen:
Oh, that's so cool. That's amazing. So, you went through ... Just for everybody else listening, we were having so much fun talking before I hit the record button, and I had to stop us so that I could hit it, so we could keep going. But, you and I were just talking about the reason why you're not "doing it."
Some of the reasons why you think people don't do it, or they don't get past that 30 days, and finally get to that tipping point like you found out. Could you dive in a little bit about why you think people don't get there, or the reasons why they don't do it?
Akbar Sheikh:
It's a couple of things Steve, in my estimation, and I talk to people regularly. It's a few things. Number one, if you want to talk about ... Remember, I lost the weight, and I went through all those transformations and I quit all my bad habits cold turkey. I lost all this weight, and we did all these things. If I was to boil it down to one word bro, it would be discipline.
Steve Larsen:
Okay.
Akbar Sheikh:
Which is funny, because I was the most ... I'm like ... My friends from yesteryear would laugh if they hear me say this right now, they'd be cracking up, because I was like the most undisciplined person in the world. I was totally free bird, hippy, party. Discipline was not my last name, you know what I mean?
Steve Larsen:
Sure.
Akbar Sheikh:
But the thing is, if you are disciplined with the way you're running your internet business, what I teach people to do is, you have to do three growth moves every single day. Basically if you do this: If you write down your goals, "Okay, my goal is to have a funnel that's making X amount of money. To have X amount of money, I need to have X amount customers.
To have X amount of customers, I need to do this much marketing, have this much of a conversion rate."
You can kind of boil it down that way...
Then, you kind of keep boiling it down, boiling ... "Okay, to get that what do I need? I need a landing page, I need a sales page, I need a checkout page. Okay, for that to work, I need it to be optimized.
For an optimized checkout page, I need trust icons, I need a testimony, I need my support number." I need all these things to fully optimize, and to get a high conversion rate.
All that stuff's out there, all that tech stuff's out there, it's just a matter of being organized, and having the discipline to every day, checking off three things. "Okay today guess what? I got a CRM system," or "Today guess what?
My checkout page is optimized, I put in the trust icons, I got a testimony." Every single day, you need to doing three growth moves.
What ends up happening is, people just end up being like information junkies, and they're just not doing anything with it. I got a great rule for that: Listen, read a book or listen to a podcast, or take a course, whatever. But here's the thing, if you're reading a book for example, do not pass chapter one without implementing everything you just learned.
Steve Larsen:
Gosh, I had the same realization that ... Because it's addicting, you fill yourself with these ideas of progress, because you're learning and you're like, "I'm getting smarter," but you're not actually doing anything.
Akbar Sheikh:
Right.
Steve Larsen:
I realized I was asking for anyone's credit card anywhere, I wasn't asking for ... I hadn't created a product, I had done anything, but I was ticked off that I wasn't being successful. It was this really introspective moment for me when I was like, "Oh my gosh, I am the guy to blame. I haven't been doing the three growth moves every day." Anyway, just massive backing that up, because that is so true. I had to literally consciously decide to stop reading books for a while. It sounds ludicrous, but that's what it took for me to actually do stuff, and stop distracting myself.
Akbar Sheikh:
Right. Another thing by the way, and I need ... I'll be honest with you listen, I'll be a little vulnerable with you guys, I don't mind. I need a little bit of babysitting, okay? I need someone on top of me sorting things out. For example, I'm not the world's most organized guy. So, that's a negative.
What did I do? I got a solution. I hired a VA, and I literally told them in the interview I'm like, "Listen, you kind of need to babysit me a little bit. Take a look at my calendar, if you saw that I had this meeting yesterday" ... Ask me, "Hey, did you followup on that?" Make this spreadsheet, because I'm not that guy who's going to sit there ... I'll make the spreadsheet, but I'm not the guy who's going to sit there and update it, because I'll just get to busy doing other things.
That's a void, but we need to fill that void...
The thing is, pretty much anyone listening to this, can afford a VA. I'm not saying get them full-time. I have people like that, but start off small. Listen, just hire a VA for an hour a day for now, and have them plug whatever void it is you have. For me, it was organization, and staying on top. The thing is, this will plug your excuses for not implementing these three growth moves, if you get some accountability.
Steve Larsen:
Right. Oh, that's powerful. Super powerful. You know it's funny, I always thought, "Hey, hiring outside help or doing something that isn't my own, that means it's no longer my product." You know what I mean? We all fall in love with these things, and make it our baby, and we refuse to ... But the moment I did, I remember it was several year ago, it was the first time I ever outsourced anything. I remember, I was in college at the time, and I came back and my product was done.
I was like, "Wow, this is crazy. I can move forward. What else can I outsource?" I got outsource happy and I was like all over the place. Anyways ...
Akbar Sheikh:
The thing about that, right? When I say outsource, it doesn't necessarily mean outsource it overseas. Totally do things domestically. Here's one thing I say: I truly believe that God has given all of us talents. We're all talented individuals. I say, stick to what you do best, and outsource the rest.
Steve Larsen:
Yep.
Akbar Sheikh:
Now, I'll give you an example. On the quick funnels page, I go through it and I'm like, "Dude, what are these people talking about?" I see all these posts, and these people are asking the most minute little technical details and it's like, "Hey, I just spent the past three hours trying to figure out how to do my STMP."
I'm like, "Dude, why? Why? Do you have any idea how valuable that three hours was? Hire a guy to set up your STMP emails, and spend those three hours on what you specialize in, because that's what's going to take your business to that next level. By the way, that's going to deteriorate your brain, spending three hours to set up your STMP. You're going to get frustrated, because you only have" ...
Our number one commodity is our time. They're not making any more of it. Time up, they're not making any more of it. The thing is, people really undervalue their time so much. It's a simple calculation, watch this.
Steve Larsen:
Okay.
Akbar Sheikh:
People think they're only valued at like $50, $100, $200 an hour, right? In reality, their value is far more, they just don't know that. So say for example, let's just use low numbers, let's just say you're valuing yourself at $100 an hour. You just spent three hours trying to figure out this tech nonsense with your gif email service, right?
Now, that cost you $300. Well guess what? You could have paid someone well, some expert $20 an hour, he would have got that done in $60. Now, you need to spend your hours on the activities that you specialize in, which is going to scale your business.
If you're not, then you're going to be just goofing around on the internet asking people, "Hey, how do I fix STMP for the rest of the day?"
Steve Larsen:
Yeah, absolutely. The first time I actually had traction with anything is, because of that very principle. I was outsourcing all the stuff that I knew wasn't the most important activities of my own expertise, and I'd get up at 4 a.m. every day, and I'd work for three hours before working came around. Then in the evening, the same thing.
I'd work another two hours in the evening. I'd sleep four or five hours a night, and just hustle that way on just the activities that I knew I was really good at. The rest of it pushed out ... Anyway, very much agree with what you're saying there. That's the only way I actually got traction with it. That's fascinating.
Akbar Sheikh:
Yeah, sweet man, that's nice to hear.
Steve Larsen:
That's super cool. So, with your ... amazing backstory that you have.
Akbar Sheikh:
Thanks bro.
Steve Larsen:
You go and you hustle like crazy, you figure out how to sell the product. What kind of funnels were you using? I mean, a lot of the stuff whether in click funnels or not, whether it's a phone funnel, you know what I mean?
Akbar Sheikh:
Right.
Steve Larsen:
Regardless of whether or not you decided to, or it was on purpose, everyone has a sales funnel. Every person, whether or not they wanted to actually make one, somehow they get sales, that's their funnel. I know that you're probably far more deliberate than most people with that.
Could you walk us through a little bit about how you were doing that on the phone, or what the funnel looked like, or ... I know you got recent, your coaching funnel, you've been putting up. You said on click funnels, things like that. Could you walk us through how you've been doing that?
Akbar Sheikh:
You know what Steve? This is the first time ... This is a breakthrough moment for me man, because this is the first time I've realized something. When I was homeless bro, my first every funnel ... Wow, is pretty much set up exactly the same way my coaching funnel is right now.
Steve Larsen:
Sweet, that's cool man.
Akbar Sheikh:
This is the funnel actually. I don't know how I didn't realized that before. Okay, I cannot do cold calling. I would rather be homeless than do cold calling, that's just not my thing.
Steve Larsen:
Whoa, I thought that's what you were doing in the closet?
Akbar Sheikh:
No, not at all.
Steve Larsen:
Oh really?
Akbar Sheikh:
No, never.
Steve Larsen:
Wow.
Akbar Sheikh:
Yeah, no I can't do it.
Steve Larsen:
I can't either.
Akbar Sheikh:
Oh God, I'll stay homeless. Being homeless is not that bad, by the way. It's all a mindset. It was terrible until I fixed my mindset.
Steve Larsen:
Sure.
Akbar Sheikh:
Listen to this: This is how really people need to do their funnels, and they don't even need the phone aspect by the way. I would send traffic to a webinar, okay? After they saw the webinar, and it was very well put together webinar that covered all what I call, "Ethical Principles of Persuasion," things as authority, scarcity, phenomenal copy, tenacity, social proof, reciprocity, likability, all these fundamental core elements that I've in my life, have identified that you need these core seven elements to have a seven figure funnel.
I sent them to a webinar via traffic. After they see the webinar, the call to action is to set up an appointment to talk to me. So, I'm only talking to people who watched the webinar, and who have an interest in what I was talking about in the webinar.
Steve Larsen:
Oh, that's nice.
Akbar Sheikh:
Do you see what I'm saying?
Now, actually I remember, when I was homeless ... When I first started, it wasn't a webinar I was sending people to, I was sending people for a 10 minute ... because this was a while ago ... No actually, they were sent to a webinar, but the people were training me to send them to a 10 minute prerecorded call, which was a 20, 30 minute prerecorded call, which was the webinar before that they were webinized.
Steve Larsen:
Sure.
Akbar Sheikh:
Yeah. No but then I did, I sent them to a webinar, and that's what I did today. I have a funnel and check this out: It's done in the past three months ... and this is just one of the funnels, it's done six figures, it's an ugly funnel, the webinar doesn't even pause, there's no email JIP system at all ... I collect your email, but I don't email you at all. There's no automated email sequence, and I don't spend ... I haven't spent a dime marketing it.
Steve Larsen:
That's amazing first of all, because a lot of those things are like the reasons why ... I'm the coach for "Two Comma Club" coaching, and a lot of the reasons people get paused, or they get stopped, or the big hurdles that they hit is that, "Well, I don't have enough money for ads."
Personally, I'm the same way. I never spend money on ads, there's other ways to do it, I just don't want to get into that world, I don't like that world. "I don't want to spend money on ads," or "I don't want to write emails," or ... Those are all things I think that expand you, and they can make you blow up, but at the core of it, those aren't sales. That's not how you get the sale.
Akbar Sheikh:
Exactly, and by the way, if I had all these things in place, if I had the emails in place, and if I tidied up the funnel and all these things, honestly the past three months, it would have done ... I honestly think I could have done ... Hold on, I could have easily over half a million, easily.
Steve Larsen:
Sure. They're good to have obviously, but man, don't let it hold you back. If you don't have those, just start, just launch.
Akbar Sheikh:
Yeah, you could totally launch and have a massively successful business, absolutely.
Steve Larsen:
So, you were using what I would call is, basically the high ticket coaching funnel. You got traffic going to webinar, puts us to a phone call, so you change the selling environment, that's awesome.
Akbar Sheikh:
Yeah, sorry?
Steve Larsen:
No go ahead, what price points were you selling, what was your product price point usually?
Akbar Sheikh:
In the beginning?
Steve Larsen:
Uh huh.
Akbar Sheikh:
There were different products ranging from $500 to $25,000.
Steve Larsen:
Sure.
Akbar Sheikh:
Yeah, just the whole spectrum really. When I first started, obviously selling a lot of the $500 stuff, but then later when you start figuring things out, [inaudible 00:27:40]. I remember my first $20,000 check. The interesting thing about that was, is that that really kind of solidified, "Okay, this year they work, this is happening." I remember when I got my second $20,000 check, it wasn't a feeling of excitement, it was just a feeling of responsibility.
Honestly, I'll put it to you this way: Once you figure out ... all the technical stuff is out there, and I really want to put this out there.
How do I make all this happen? How to build a nice seven figure business? All the information is out there, and we teach all that. But once you actually figure it out, and you put these simple formulas in place, and you start seeing that money coming in, with great power comes great responsibility.
Steve Larsen:
Sure.
Akbar Sheikh:
I truly believe that. We're at a point now, where honestly we can sell anything to anyone, because we've mastered the psychology of sales. We know exactly what to say to the person to tap deep into their mind, right?
Steve Larsen:
Right.
Akbar Sheikh:
But the thing is, you have to use these powers for good. Now, there's a lot of companies who have these powers, but they use it for bad like, when the cigarette companies were marketing towards kids, or today, the soda companies are targeting children, the high sugary extraordinarily unhealthy sodas, and it's working like crazy.
I reject Steve, a lot of money man on a monthly basis ... Because of the way I have my funnel set up, and the psychology behind it, people come to me and they're ready to buy.
I reject a lot of people who have a lot of cash in hand and I say, "No listen, your idea is no good. This business idea that you want to launch, it's not good. You should not be launching." Either that, or it's some unethical ... Not unethical, but something that I feel is not going to make the world a better place. I feel that everyone has X amount of hours a day, why not spend that towards something good?
Steve Larsen:
Right.
Akbar Sheikh:
I've had some people lately just trying to ... I've had a lot of them, must be some fad or something. A lot of people are trying to get me to build a funnel for them for the steaming service, where they can get HBO and all these things for free, and apparently it's totally legal. I'm like, "Okay, how is that helping the world be a better place?"
That just sounds like some Napster fad, you know what I mean?
Steve Larsen:
Yeah.
Akbar Sheikh:
Back to that hour thing, right? Only X amount of hours a day. You and I have the same amount of hours in a day as Elon Musk, as Bill Gates, as Richard Branson, as all these guys, as Russel Branson, as Steve Larsen.
Steve Larsen:
Yeah.
Akbar Sheikh:
Why not build an empire? Why are people going after the quick buck? Why not build something of longevity with a legacy that you could leave to your family? My mind has really opened up lately. I spoke to a gentleman who raised over a billion dollars for our school systems, and he really opened up my mind man.
I talk to people everyday in this funnel world, and this online world, and they all say the same thing, or most of them say the same thing when I ask them, "Hey man, how much are you looking to make?" All saying the same thing, "Oh, I want to make a million dollars, I want to make seven figures, I want to make $80,000 a month, I want to make $100,000 a month," it's all pretty much the same thing.
Steve Larsen:
Yeah.
Akbar Sheikh:
What I've realized Steve is, in the spectrum of one to 100, getting to a million dollars is like really step one bro.
Steve Larsen:
Yeah.
Akbar Sheikh:
Everyone's got that as their end game, you know what I mean? The vision goes that far, "Oh the main thing? I just wanted to have a million dollars." I'm telling you from a dude who's gone from homeless to helping create several seven figure funnels, I got to tell you that it's not the end game. It's just the beginning. It's just the beginning of something special, where you can take these skills that you're acquiring, and really make a serious footprint in this world and make this world a better place.
We now have the capabilities, through the skills you learn, through all my marketing, believe it or not, and the psychology of sales, and all these great things in funnels, this will empower you to make the world a better place. You will not be able to contribute to solving world hunger, to helping all the orphans out there. Do you know that 20 million people die, are dying from starvation? Have you been to a restaurant lately? Do you see how much food is being wasted?
You will get to the point where you can be a fault leader, and you can change ... Honest to God, I'm telling you from a dude who lived in an electrical closet, who had to go find change in awkward places just to get enough money to go to the dollar menu for dinner, I'm telling you, you can change the world from funnels.
Steve Larsen:
It's amazing. I recently was talking to Russel, we use Vox a lot, and we were talking about the exact same thing. I was telling him that ... He was telling me, "Hey man, thanks so much for what you do, and being here and all that," and I was like, "Man, I gotta tell you that" ... I was talking back to him and I was like, "Hey man, I gotta tell you, I truly believe in what we are doing. It goes way beyond a software company. It goes way beyond any kind of marketing thing, far beyond any kind of dollar amount. It changed people's lives."
I've seen it many times now, and a lot of my own students that's done that for the now, and it's like, when you see that in another person, it is so rewarding. It's beyond any other dollar amount you could put up to it, it's very rewarding. When I walk into click funnels, guys wherever you are and you walk into your zone, and you get into the space where you're going to try and produce and being an awesome producer, and put value out in the marketplace, think of it as hallowed ground, I do.
Because what you're about to go do, can have direct impact generationally for people all around the world.
Anyway, firmly believe that, very much to my core even, and it's one of the things ... Several people ask, "How do you guys not sleep so much? How is it that you guys can go as fast as you can?" Well, it's because our "why" is huge. My "why" is gigantic. You feel a little pain with sleep like, "Man, I dare you to feel a little bit of pain if that's what it takes for you to go start getting into really deep why and fix yourself." Anyway, 100% completely agree with everything you're saying on that, it's so huge.
You recently, right before we started the call too, you were talking about how ... I'm so glad you brought this up, because this has been something big on my mind lately also. You said, you go and you start building this funnel. Obviously, probably the term funnel hacking may not have been a big thing yet, or whatever but you said, "Funnel hacking is pretty misunderstood." Do you mind diving into that a little bit?
Akbar Sheikh:
Yeah, no I will. Just to add to what you were just saying before I get into that real quick is, what I've realized is that yeah, for the first time in my life I've had this "why," and it truly unlocks you as a person. What I've realized is, every person I talk to, if you boil it down to everybody no matter how much money they're making already, no matter what success level they're at, they only want two things: They want time and financial freedom.
I have to tell you, when you make it, you really get a true sense of freedom, because you're truly liberated. True freedom is when you don't care that you just made $20,000 today. It doesn't matter to you, because it's about a bigger purpose. You're working towards something that's much bigger than you. For the first time in my life, I've really attained true freedom, and that's only when I put other people's needs before mine. I'm with you 100%, and it's so nice to hear that Steve.
But yeah, funnel hacking ... Every time that word "Funnel hacking," I wish there was an asterisk, and a little disclaimer, honestly. People got it so wrong. Okay, people think funnel hacking is just going to some successful funnel, copying and pasting.
Steve Larsen:
Yeah, right.
Akbar Sheikh:
That couldn't be any further from the truth. So, there's this great saying I always used to tell people, "Don't listen to what they are saying, see what they're doing."
Steve Larsen:
Yeah, it's not about the pages.
Akbar Sheikh:
Right. It's about the formulas. There's certain formulas that work, yes. Take a look at that, but understand something: You are you, everyone has their own unique fingerprint, and everyone has their own unique brand. So for example, if you're copying Dan Henry for example, right?
Dan Henry who's got a great funnel by the way, but he's got his own crowd. He's got his own product, he's got his own brand, and it's geared towards that.
Now, you can take some of these successful formulas, right? Dan's a really nice guy by the way. You can take these formulas, but you get melt your fingerprint into it. You need to melt your brand into it, and personalize it towards your audience to talk into your people, your prospects.
You see, so it's not copy/paste. This copy and paste is so bad, that I've seen people copy and paste emails, and the emails at the end will say, "All right love you from, Steve."
Steve Larsen:
Yeah.
Akbar Sheikh:
They copy and paste it, and their name is Brian, and they didn't even realize, and they're email says, "Hey love you, Steve."
Steve Larsen:
Yeah no seriously, I had a guy do that to me the other day. He totally jacked my emails and everything, and then left my support email address in, because he was too lazy ... I was getting ... all the support people were all mad. Yeah, anyway.
Akbar Sheikh:
Take a look at the logic of it though, Steve. The thing is, is it's that simple. "This dude is making a million dollars, if I just copy his funnel." If it was that simple, then it would work, but it doesn't work like that does it?
Steve Larsen:
No, it doesn't. Oh my gosh. I got to hold myself back, because I'm about to go off and say things that I'm going to regret, and this is being recorded, so I can't do that. Anyway.
Akbar Sheikh:
We'll talk.
Steve Larsen:
Yeah.
Akbar Sheikh:
When you read an email, read it through a different lens. Read it and see, what are they really saying? Read in between the lines, "Oh okay, over here when he says" ... For example, and I got to get this off of my head, but ... For example, "It's not your fault that you haven't succeeded before with Facebook ads. It's not your fault, you were just trying the wrong thing."
When you read that, understand the psychology behind that. What they're doing is, they're aligning with you. They know you've had some sort of failures, and they're going on your side. They're saying, "Hey, it's not your fault, the program was bad." Then, people by nature, they don't want to be blunt and say, "You know what? You're right, Steve, it's not my fault, it's their fault, I'm with you 100%."
Now, there's a trust being built. Do you see what I'm saying? I'm becoming your friend now via the email. So, read in between the lines and really see what they're messages, and what emotion they're trying to evoke out of you, and then use that in your own product and your own brand, and your own email, in your own words.
Steve Larsen:
Yeah, and your own thing. I love that you said melt your own finger into it.
Akbar Sheikh:
Yeah.
Steve Larsen:
Very powerful, it sounds like a t-shirt. Yeah, that is a good t-shirt. It has nothing to do with ... There comes down to a point after a while where it's like, "Okay yeah, maybe a green button is better than a red button," or I don't know, but from the very deep foundation level, it has nothing to do with that. It has nothing to do with pages, it's all about offer structure and the marketing behind it, and it's more than just, "Hey, where are they getting their traffic? I'll get it from there too." It's so much on a deeper level than that. I'm glad you brought that up though.
Akbar Sheikh:
Yeah.
Steve Larsen:
I wanted to ask just a few other questions here about the funnel itself. Is this the same funnel type and strategy that you're continuing to use as you did back when you were living in the closet?
Akbar Sheikh:
Sure. Yeah.
Steve Larsen:
Profit, webinar, phone? You push them to a ...
Akbar Sheikh:
Now it's a little different. Now, I'm not even pushing ... Yeah, I used to send traffic funny enough via Craigslist. So, I'd have an ad on Craigslist, it would send them to the website, and then they would call me after the webinar.
Steve Larsen:
Wow.
Akbar Sheikh:
Now, people go directly to my webinar, if they like it they schedule a call with me. Now here's the interesting part, I'm not actually even sending traffic. All my traffic is organic. People when they hear this they're like, "Well okay cool, what does that mean?" It's so funny ... It's funny, I want to talk to you like I'm an 80 year old man right now, and I'm in my 30's.
Facebook is the most powerful platform I've ever seen in my entire life...
It's funny I say that, because I literally just got on Facebook several months ago. I never really had it before, but for social reasons. My friends were old school, they were not on Facebook, so I was never into it. I just got onto it a little while ago, so I'm discovering all these things. I'm like, "Man, this is awesome. This is so powerful."
You know they say you're only using five percent of your brain?
Steve Larsen:
Right.
Akbar Sheikh:
People are only using one percent of the power of Facebook, and funnels by the way. People are only using five percent of the power of funnels, and really, people are not taking advantage ... What do I mean by organic traffic? Let me be very straight forward and clear about this, and I really get into this, and I'm hosting a mastermind and I'll tell you about that, but I really ... The whole point of the mastermind is to really delve into this topic right here.
When you click on someone's profile on Facebook, all these people who are in this internet marketing space, it gives you a little description about them. You read this, "Hey, I'm a Facebook ad expert," right?
Steve Larsen:
Right.
Akbar Sheikh:
People have the dumbest things in the world on their profile. When you click on, "Hey, serial entrepreneur. Enthusiast hardcore photographer."
Steve Larsen:
I know. "Seeking new opportunities," I hate that one.
Akbar Sheikh:
"Thrill seeking mom. Serial entrepreneur. Author, coach, foodie." I'm just like, "What are you doing? Go to mine. You have no idea ... That is your own billboard in Time Square, and you're putting some goofball picture of yourself saying, "Hey, I'm a foodie." Like, "What are you doing? No you're not a foodie, you're a number one top five percent Facebook ad generator, or whatever you are."
If you click on me, what does it say? It says ... I'll actually go look, but it says something like, "I build wildly profitable funnels."
Steve Larsen:
It caught my eye. When I saw it, and I was looking at it, I love that headline.
Akbar Sheikh:
Yeah, and it's true. I build wildly ... The thing is ... People say, "I'm new to this." Well listen, you think you're new, what about me? I started off in a closet. Everybody starts somewhere. Every single person that you see that's at seven figures, eight figures, whatever it is, they started off exactly where you are.
Steve Larsen:
Yeah.
Akbar Sheikh:
Nobody came ... If you don't have any results, I hate that ... I hate that excuse by the way. If you don't have any results, go get some quickly, and immediately. If you can't ... and offer your services for free to people, your product or whatever, and get those testimonies. If you can't do that very quickly, then honestly, you're in the wrong ... You need to switch business, because you're not good at that. Do you see what I'm saying?
Steve Larsen:
Yeah, and it's a hard pill to swallow for some people I think, but I am glad that you brought that up. I was coaching somebody one time, and he could not figure out how to turn Skype on. I was like, "Uh man, you might to switch. If you can't even open your computer up," and I was like, "Oh man."
Akbar Sheikh:
Yeah exactly. No but the thing is, that I truly believe that you ... People say I'm not a marketer, I'm not a salesman, and I really hate that language too. By the way, I use the word "hate," I don't actually hate anything, because I'm not of that mindset, I'm just being frank with you guys.
Steve Larsen:
Sure.
Akbar Sheikh:
Understand this: You don't hate sales, you hate the negative connotation. You think of some cheesy used car salesman, but understand this, this is powerful: If sales did not exist, society would crumble fast. Fast, immediately, over night. The economy?
Crumble...
Society, culture? Crumble. Why? Listen to this, you have a significant other, right? Steve, are you married or single?
Steve Larsen:
Yes sir, two kids.
Akbar Sheikh:
Awesome man, me too. Listen, take a look at this concept of marriage for a second. Some person you did not know for the majority of your life, some person who lived somewhere else, different upbringing, not a part of your circle, some stranger really. That stranger you now share your life with them, you live with them, you trust them with everything, your children, your finances, your everything, you're in the same room with them, you spend nights with them, and how does that happen?
It happens by developing ... You had to convince that person that you are trustworthy to live with, that you are responsible, that you are capable of taking care of her, okay? What do you think that's called? That's sales.
Steve Larsen:
Yeah, there's a lot of selling going on on my side [inaudible 00:46:38]?
Akbar Sheikh:
You did such a good job. Let me tell you what a great salesman you are. You're so good at it, that you convinced someone to drop their life and live with you.
Okay, you all have a job, right? Hopefully not, hopefully you all have a nice business, but at some point you all had a job, right?
Well guess what? Someone's paying you to spend your time doing the work that's very important to them. You created some sort of resume, you went for an interview, you showed them that, "Yes, hey look, you can trust me. I'm capable of doing this work. I will do a great job at it. I will take your company forward." That's a great selling job right there, and you won. You got that job.
Understand this: Sales is not that cheesy, used car salesman stuff. Selling is simply good communication.
Steve Larsen:
Yeah, it is. It's the transfer of belief, that's how I've heard it described.
Transfer of belief...
Akbar Sheikh:
Yeah. By the way, if you improve that ... Some people are not that good at communicating, but if you improve that ... and there's simple ways to do that, your whole ... Not only will your business scale bro, but all aspects of your life, your marriage, your relationships will be better, your health will be better, your business ... Your whole life will be better.
Steve Larsen:
Right, absolutely. So, inside the Facebook page, you're trying to, "Oh, I'm going to soft sell right off the bat," you're just at least selling the opt in for the webinar I'm assuming, right? That's what you said about billboard.
Akbar Sheikh:
I have my website right there, and I present my big point. All of you have some big point, what you do, right? For me it's, "I build wildly successful funnels." I put it right then and there, and I said, "Hey by the way, do you want to see how we've built several seven figure funnels recently? Click here, sort of thing. Check out my few master class." Who doesn't want that? We're just educating people.
You need to tell people, "Hey, do you want this?" You need to know your audience very well. Most people don't take the time and research their audience, but you really need to know, what do they want badly, and give them what they want.
Steve Larsen:
It can't be that simple.
Akbar Sheikh:
It is. I'm telling you ...
Steve Larsen:
I know it is, it's awesome.
Akbar Sheikh:
Steve, you know what I hate bro? Again, you see that on a lot of these pages, people talking such hardcore tech like, "Oh, I'm going split test between 2 a.m. and 3 a.m. Does the color green is better than red in the morning?"
I'm like, "Dude, cut. Stop. Cut that out." I don't test any of that stuff.
Steve Larsen:
It's either honestly.
Akbar Sheikh:
Okay, so coming from you man, that means a lot, because I know that you guys are pretty thorough.
Steve Larsen:
What we split test like offer structure like crazy, but green button, blue button, that stuff, we really don't. We don't do that often.
Akbar Sheikh:
This is good news for people, this is good news. A lot of people are very successful offline, they want to go online, and they're kind of nervous. A lot of people are not trying to make it online, and they're struggling. This is a great breakthrough for these people listening to understand that, it's not as complicated as some people might make it seem.
Steve Larsen:
No, it's really not. Have a good offer, know what people want, provide value, you'll make money.
Akbar Sheikh:
Don't give up.
Steve Larsen:
Don't give up, just be a little gutless with it and ... Could you through the remainder of what your actual funnel is now today?
Akbar Sheikh:
One of my funnels, which is like my coaching funnel is super simple man. It's just you go directly to an opt in, and the opt in convert is really well, but I think it's like ... I have to check, I don't even check funny enough, but it's like 65 plus percent opt in, 65, 75% opt in.
Steve Larsen:
Wow.
Akbar Sheikh:
What it is, it's very simple ... Actually here, I'm on a computer, I can pull it up just to give you ... just so I can walk you through, we want to give people like a crash lesson, and how to have a good opt in page. Basically, you pull in ... Okay so, I have a picture ... Again, it goes back to audience research. What does mine say? It says, "I help business scale to seven figures by ethically injecting principles of persuasion into their funnels. See the exact steps recently taken to help create three seven figure funnels, watch the free master class."
I have a picture of me on the left, and it's really a picture of authority. I'm wearing a nice suit, I have a nice watch on. Right now if you look at me, I'm wearing a click funnels t-shirt, and flip flops, right? That's me. But, I have a nice blue suit on, I got a nice tie, I got my hair done, and my eyes are looking at that text.
Steve Larsen:
Okay.
Akbar Sheikh:
I'm holding what people want, which is my "Two Comma Club" award. Okay. So now a dude dressed up, looking at the words, because that's just a psychology thing, you're going to look where I'm looking. I've seen funnels where people have pictures looking to the right, and all their text is to the left. That's kind of funny. That messes up it all by the way.
Steve Larsen:
It does, we actually do follow that exact same thing you're saying right now. We do that personally.
Akbar Sheikh:
Yeah, awesome. Then, "I help X do X by X." It's a simple formula. That's it, and just fill in whatever it is your business is doing, right? Then, watch the free master class, and I have a nice ... That's another thing by the way, a lot of people say webinars and stuff like that, I say master class. Here's another thing: You know what's kind of played out? Here's a great little practical tip that you all can do right away, and I honestly feel you'll see better conversions: I think everyone's got this 30 day guarantee, right?
Steve Larsen:
Yeah.
Akbar Sheikh:
I just play it out. I discovered something that works a lot better. I don't even know if I should be sharing this secret. I actually don't believe in competition. No, and I don't mind sharing any secrets honestly, because I don't believe in competition. I feel the internet is infinite, and I feel that competition is irrelevant. That's my mindset.
Check this out: Take out your guarantee, because everyone and their uncle is using that. Put in for example Steve, put in the Steve Larsen promise. The Steve Larsen promise, and go to your graphic designer, go to Fiverr, or whatever and get a nice badge made out of it. A badge, not some icon, a nice badge, and put the Steve Larsen promise.
What this is, from a psychologist sales point of view is, you know what's really powerful when you're selling to someone in person?
If you can look someone in the eye, put your left hand on their shoulder, and take your right hand and shake their hand nice and firmly and look them in the eye and say, "Hey listen, I promise I am going to treat your business like it's my own, and we're going to help you out."
That exchange right there is extremely powerful. Now, we're online. How are we going to do that? This promise can do that, this promise is our version of that. This is our virtual version of that strong handshake, and looking someone in the eye. The promise says ... It'll have your picture, and your signature and say, "Hey, I promise" ... For example, I recently did a probiotic funnel, "I promise that we are using the highest quality ingredients.
We promise that we give this to our own families, and we consider you our family. We consider you our family, and so we keep that in mind. We promise that these probiotics will help your digestive tract within 48 hours."
It's just promising what you're delivering, and you're using the word promise. You have your picture there, right? You have your signature there, and now you're building real trust, you're building relationships. Now listen, whatever you're promising, make sure you're delivering on that, okay?
Steve Larsen:
Right.
Akbar Sheikh:
Because I'll tell you something about that, and I'm going on a little bit of a rant here, but the past 30 hours I've made over $20,000. You want to know how?
Steve Larsen:
Yeah.
Akbar Sheikh:
Through this concept of relationships. I treat people good, right? I treat people right just because it's the right thing to do. But what happens is, I give a ton of value for free. Now ... Check this out, you all said you don't like sales, right? You remember you said, "Oh, I don't like sales, I can't do sales." Guess what? Here's a little hack. I've created ... and I don't even pay for this guys, I've created a massive sales team.
Let me explain, I have all these loyal fans, followers, because they love my content, because I open up my heart, and I tell them my secrets, because I don't believe in competition, and I truly in my heart want them to succeed. So, I give them content, I give them value.
Now, recently on one of these Facebook pages, someone was saying, "Hey, I don't have a six figure business, I need help to scale to seven figures. Who can help me?"
There's posts like this all the time, and no matter what business or industry you are in, there's posts like that. Say for example, your Facebook dude is like, "Hey, I need a Facebook guy," or "I need a CEO guy," or "Anyone know anyone good for probiotics or supplements?" There's always someone calling your name out there. Check this out: Because I've given so much value to people, when that person asks for recommendation, their inbox got lit up by people saying, "Go check out Akbar, go check out Akbar."
When I first started I had to say, "Me me me, pick me, pick me." I had to go there, "Hey pick me, me, me, me." Now, I don't do that at all, because I have my sales team who I don't pay just from the basic core fundamental of reciprocity, because I give them value, they go out there they're like, "No, no check out this guy, check Akbar, check out Akbar," and that's the value of keeping your promise.
Steve Larsen:
That's seriously, that one principle you just said is the reason that I have ... One of my little side hustle site businesses runs. That exact same thing just pumps so much value out there, solved so many legitimate problems really quickly. I think one of the reasons people sometimes aren't is, because they kind of remain in this fake zone, where they right off the bat too quickly expect a dollar for what they're doing. They expect to be compensated ... It doesn't work that way.
Akbar Sheikh:
There's such a scarcity mindset, right? I reset that book, and thank God it did well. Listen, there was a point in my life I couldn't afford a paper and a crayon for me to draw a book cover. Now, we can thank God by the grace of God, we can afford any graphic artist in the world. But the thing is, I wanted my people to be involved, and I wanted my people to prosper with me.
I put out a contest and said, "Hey guys," I assume that there was some graphic designers in there. I said, "Hey guys, I'm doing a book cover contest. Submit your cover on this thread, and the winner gets to be my cover. I'll choose and I'll use it as my cover."
Of course you had one hater, right? There's always a hater, "Oh, smart man. Getting everybody to do, getting a book cover for free, want all of us to do the work for you." I'm like, "Dude, I don't care." By the way, I'm not cheap and actually, I have a legitimate spending problem, which I've gotten a coach for so I no longer have it, but bro let me explain something to you.
I did this to empower people, because guess what? I pick the winner, and I gave him a shout out to all of my followers and I said, "This guy is awesome."
Now, for the rest of this guys lif, for the rest of his life he could say, "I have a cover on a number one international bestselling book."
Steve Larsen:
Yeah.
Akbar Sheikh:
What do you think? Do you have an idea how saturated graphic design in that industry is? It's so saturated, and if someone's picking between Dave and someone else, and Dave could be like ... That's his whole thing now. He can go to people. If someone's asking, "Hey, I need a good graphics guy." Dave can be like, "Well listen, I just did a book cover and it landed number one international bestseller."
Steve Larsen:
Yeah, you just paid him massively.
Akbar Sheikh:
I just paid him massively. I'm empowering people, because what I've really realized through this journey guys is, if you put other people's needs before your own, meaning your customers, right? You're going to win 100, you're going to get so much more money.
Don't try to get a quick buck. I recently had a guy, he wanted me to build him a probiotic funnel, and there was this one upsell where it's like ... It was just like, "Add this bottle for a dollar," and then he's like ... Then I was reading the fine print, which was super fine, and it was like, "When you click this button by the way, we're going to send you a bottle every month for $9.99."
I was like, "Dude, what are you doing? This is not obvious at all, people think that they're just paying a dollar for an extra bottle. What is this?" If you want to do that, I got to put it clearly, "Hey, this is a monthly subscription." He's like, "Well you know, that's just what they do." I'm like, "I don't care if that's what they do, this is not how you build an empire. You're going to get so many charge backs, people are going to lose trust in you, you're going to lose this customer. This is just a quick buck."
The thing is, if you treat them right, and you give them value, and you keep your work and your promise ... The toughest thing to do is, to get someone to pull out their credit card and buy from you, but the easiest thing in the world to do is to get that person to pull out their credit card again and buy from you again, if you've provided them value and a positive experience.
Steve Larsen:
Right.
Akbar Sheikh:
Do you see what I'm saying?
Steve Larsen:
Oh absolutely, yeah. There's no longevity, there's no sustainability in that kind of model, just be honest [crosstalk 01:01:28]. Tell people what's really going on, yeah. We've been going for a bit, and I honestly could talk to you all day. I love ... I had no idea you and I are so similar.
Akbar Sheikh:
Oh yeah, that's cool man.
Steve Larsen:
Our mindsets I think, and anyway just kind of pull it full circle and to be the author/speaker/coach/consultant category, you ... Just to kind of wrap up with this funnel, you've got the Facebook and other organic traffic strategies running, that's going to a squeeze page, which is amazing.
I've seen it you say, "I help blank do blank by blank," which is amazing, watch the free master class. You have your own guarantee in there, which is the Akbar promise with your own badge, which is amazing also.
Then after that it pushes to, is it a webinar, then coaching call? Which I'm assuming now you have other people you've trained to help do that, and field those as well?
Akbar Sheikh:
It's just that exactly. It goes right to my calendar, and you can book a call. Yeah absolutely, you can get salesmen. Then, my closing rate, because ... I need to work on my filtration system, because people who ... My closing rate right now is 50%, which is low frankly, because ... Put it this way, it's actually a lot higher for qualified people. It's actually a lot higher.
Steve Larsen:
Sure.
Akbar Sheikh:
Probably 80, or 90%. For some reason, some people who are not even supposed to be on that call, they slip through the filtration somehow, but yeah no. The point is, when you have ... I always say, "Set up a good filtration system. Don't talk to anyone unless they're a hot lead if you're in this kind of space, in the high ticket space, because it's not about cold calling, it's about talking to the right people at the right time."
Steve Larsen:
Oh, that's amazing. That's amazing. That's really interesting though that you have that realization too ... It really is as far as steps and like you said, the seven elements you have of the ethical persuasion, and those things. It really is very similar funnel to what you were using when you were living in a closet, which is so cool that it works that way.
Akbar Sheikh:
Yeah no, that's crazy that we came together on this show man, it's true. So yeah, I guess gosh, I guess it started with that when I had nothing. That kind of eliminates all excuses for everyone man.
Steve Larsen:
Yeah, that's so cool. Well Akbar, I want to thank you so much. Where can people find out more about you? By the way, just for everyone, in case you haven't caught it in between the lines, I just want to pull it out there, Akbar has put a best selling book out there. That's insane. That's not easy to do, could you tell them what the name of the book is, and where they can find out more about you?
Akbar Sheikh:
Yeah no, so we were blessed it was an international best seller in six countries including America.
Steve Larsen:
Oh man.
Akbar Sheikh:
The book title is funny it's, "Seven Figure Funnels - I'll slap you in the face with a cold, wet fish blueprint on how to build a million dollar business online in just seven ethical steps :)"
Steve Larsen:
I laughed when I read the title. I was immediately intrigued. You're doing your job as a marketer. I was like, "I have to read that book."
Akbar Sheikh:
My editor had a half hour conversation, be like begging me to change the title I'm like, "Nope, nope, nope, not doing it. Not doing it. If we're going to do it, we're going to do it my way."
Steve Larsen:
Oh that's awesome.
Akbar Sheikh:
Yeah, but no listen, we're hosting ... I talked about how we generated ... I really want to break down for people how I've done all this stuff. I gave people a lot of great gems I think in this podcast, but to really break it down, I need a full weekend, which is why we're hosting a mastermind in actually just a couple of weeks here in Dallas.
I really invite you guys to join us, it's actually going to be me, Rachel Peterson, who's the queen of social media. We're actually having implementation bootcamp, mastermind weekend here in Dallas, where you are going to come in with your business that's going to be in a certain type of shape, and it's going to leave in a totally different ... You're going to actually leave that weekend with a totally different business.
That's what I love about internet marketing is, that instant gratification.
Steve Larsen:
Yeah.
Akbar Sheikh:
I just love it, because you can make some changes and see benefits right away. That's what we're going to be doing guys, that's on my website, and that's where all of my stuff is. If you just go to my name dot come, which is akbarsheikh.com, A-K-B-A-R-S-H-E-I-K-H dot com, that's where you can find out more about me, and hopefully see us on the mastermind and we can ... If your product or service is out there to make the world a better place, I'm with you 100%, and I'm more than happy to help you scale to seven figures.
Steve Larsen:
I appreciate that so much. You had mentioned before too, honestly an insanely generous gift that ...
Akbar Sheikh:
Yeah.
Steve Larsen:
I just want to make sure that they get it, because it's so cool. I'm so excited for everyone here.
Akbar Sheikh:
Yeah no, it's my pleasure. I think Steve does a great job, I think he's a great guy, and I think that you guys ... Every honest ... I truly believe that every honest, hard working person deserves a thriving online business. It's life changing, and I truly do want to make the world a better place. One of my offers is to contribute to that is this book, which is $47 on Amazon right now if you take a look.
However, for you guys it'd be my honor to give you guys a free copy...
Steve Larsen:
Oh.
Akbar Sheikh:
Yeah. If you just go to my name dot com slash Steve, S-T-E-V-E, it would be my privilege and honor to give you guys a free copy.
Steve Larsen:
That's so generous of you, thank you very much Akbar, that's huge. Everyone go get that, and that's very exciting. Check out the mastermind also, he'll be hosting soon with Rachel Peterson, and Andrew, and obviously it's going to be fantastic. I hope I can be there, that would be cool, but ...
Akbar Sheikh:
Yeah, would love to have you man.
Steve Larsen:
Anyway, thanks so much Akbar, and thanks for all the value. Guys, go get the results first, provide actual value for people, and the business, and all the tech stuff gets a lot easier too as you move down.
Akbar Sheikh:
Oh yeah.
Steve Larsen:
Hey, thanks so much. Anything else you want to add?
Akbar Sheikh:
I'll add one last thing guys, one of my big secrets to success and it really has nothing to do with funnels is that ... I hope you don't mind Steve, me adding this one last thing, but ... I'm just telling you, I'm not preaching, but I'm just telling you what I'd do is, give ... The more, more that this figure to this out, the more, more money you're going to make. But whatever you're making, I give 10% away to charity. I find it to be one of my biggest secrets of success. I find that you get a lot more in return, a lot more.
Find your passion, what you're passionate about. Are you passionate about helping starving people? Are you passionate about orphans? Those are the two things that I'm passionate about, but you may be passionate about animal cruelty, or other things. Donate to these causes, at least 10%, and by the way, if you're at the point where you cannot afford it, that's fine. But then, donate your time. Donate your time to these causes.
Now, if you don't have the time, then at least call up your mom or a relative, or someone and just make them smile.
Steve Larsen:
Right.
Akbar Sheikh:
Even when you're going to go get your coffee, or you're going to go ... Just deal with people. Just look at them and smile and say, "Thank you," and ask them about their day. That's charity too by the way, if you don't do those sorts of things.
You'll see when you do that by the way ... God wants you to smile you know why?
Because when you smile, natural endorphins are released into you and you actually have a better day, this is scientifically proven. Guys, I really recommend to give as much as you can. It's really done wonders for me, and so so many people. I'd love to leave you on that note.
Steve Larsen:
I appreciate that. Anyway, I do that also. I strongly believe that that's actually ... The 10% thing, I do that also.
Akbar Sheikh:
Oh cool man.
Steve Larsen:
Anyway, thanks so much Akbar, appreciate it. Guys, go check out akbarsheikh.com/steve for a copy of your free book, "Seven Figure Funnels." Go check out the mastermind, he's going to be putting up here soon also. Thanks so much Akbar, appreciate it.
Akbar Sheikh:
God bless dude, thank you so much.
Speaker 2:
Thanks for listening to Sales Funnel Radio. Please remember to subscribe and leave feedback. Want to get one of today's best internet sales funnel for free? Go to salesfunnelbroker.com/3funnels to download your prebuilt sales funnel today.
Groceries, Restaurants, Clothes, etc. Joe spills the beans on HOW to drive WALK-INs to Brick and Mortar businesses...
Steve Larsen:
What's going on everyone? This is Steve Larsen and you're listening to another episode of Sales Funnel Radio. This is part four of our six part series, and the highlight of today is going to be all about retail funnels, brick and mortar style. This is an interesting category of funnels that we put together, because it does go and transcend across a lot of different areas.
The person I'm going to be interviewing today, his name is Joe Giglietti. Joe, I respect him like crazy. Personal friend of mine. Really, really enjoy any kind of time I get to spend with him. I always learn from him quite a bit. He has a great story he's going to share with you, and then also he's going to dive through the funnel he uses to get people to show up.
It's not just about leads with the retail world, it's all about walk-ins and getting people to come and actually step into your store, whether it's a restaurant or grocery store or whatever it is.
This is not including the professional services category, that category includes dentists and lawyers and doctors. People who there's some kind of specialty involved with it. We call it the professional services. This is not that, this is retail/brick and mortar.
You might think grocery stores, you might think restaurants, you might think Best Buy, those kinds of places. With that, we're going to dive right into the episode.
I would grab a piece of paper because I literally filled an entire thing of notes again on beautiful concept, amazing things that I know that can transform your business, especially if you're jumping into the retail space. It is a different style funnel than the other funnels, which is why it's its own category. With that, let's jump right into this episode.
Announcer:
Welcome to Sales Funnel Radio, where you'll learn marketing strategies to grow your online business using today's best internet sales funnels. Now, here's your host, Steve Larsen.
Steve Larsen:
Alright, alright. With me today I've got a very special guest, who is representing the retail/brick and mortar space in this special six part series. This would be part four. What he's going to teach us is how he's been using Facebook ads and funnels to drive his business and help other businesses with their own companies and their successes.
I first met this person, I don't even know, it's probably a year ago now. Immediately fell in love with what he believes and what he does. As we started to get more and more of a relationship, it became very apparent that he and I actually have very similar views on the world, beliefs on it, what we're here to do, providing value.
It was really a cool thing to bond over. Anyways, with that I want to welcome you to the show. This is Mr. Joe Giglietti everyone.
Joe Giglietti:
What's up man, thank you so much. I am super stocked to be here on the show with you. I know there'll be lots of energy because I'm with Steven. You guys don't even know. Before we even got on here we were screaming at each other through Voxer, like those motivational things Steven does. It was great.
Steve Larsen:
It's so fun. I don't know how that started but one day I just started, I was like, "This is Russell Brunson, this is my mentor. I can't screw this up. What's up..." You know, I was like ...
Joe Giglietti:
Do all your other guest call you and go crazy on Voxer too? [crosstalk 00:03:20]
Steve Larsen:
No, you're definitely the first one to ever do that.
Joe Giglietti:
Okay, awesome. I'm proud, I'm proud.
Steve Larsen:
Actually, I think I'll toss it inside if you're cool with it.
Joe Giglietti:
Yeah, absolutely sure.
Steve Larsen:
I'm going to put in the show.
Joe Giglietti:
I think it's time to give you a little dose of what you give Russell, I'm told, almost every day. Do you know what today is? Do you know what today is Steven? Today is the day that you get to Funnel Hack.
Today is the day that you get to change people's thinking. You get to change people's action. Today is the day you get to change people's focus and thereby change their lives.
Today is the day that you get to tell the world how to Funnel Hack. Are you with me? Shout yes.
Steve Larsen:
Yeah baby. We get... Let me hear your war cry.
Hey, thanks so much for joining though. I want to dive into a little bit more about how I met you. For everyone who's listening on the show, we were building some funnels. This was back when Russell was taking clients. We were building, it was for your daughter.
Joe Giglietti:
Yeah.
Steve Larsen:
It was for Emily. I just remember talking to Russell after we saw some videos of you guys doing stuff. He's trying to show me, showing about the client, showing what were going to do and the funnel we were going to build. I was like, "Man, this girl is incredible."
Then I immediately had the same thought, it was like, "Her parents must be incredible for her to be like that." Then it was a few months later, then I actually met you and I was like, "This guy is incredible."
I actually went to Dan Henry's and you were speaking and, no joke, I was like, again, "This guy is incredible again." I actually thought you bar none were the best speech of the entire thing.
Joe Giglietti:
Thanks man.
Steve Larsen:
I'm dead serious. I told Russell when I came back and everyone else. I was like, "He just crushed it." You were taking off. You were telling these amazing stories of things you had been going through at the same time that we were working. I had no idea about any of it.
Anyway, whatever else you'd like to go into or share, whatever, but do you mind telling people a little bit about the backstory of how you got into this world, sales funnels, funnel building, and what put you here?
Because I know you've been around, you're certainly a professional. You went around, real estate, right? You did lots of different things.
Joe Giglietti:
Yeah.
Steve Larsen:
How did you end up here?
Joe Giglietti:
I'm an entrepreneur...
I did take one job out of college, I lasted two months. I had to go because I told them they had all kind of things they needed to do and I was going to fix it for them, and they were averse to change. Surprising, right, a corporation averse to change.
Steve Larsen:
Yeah, that's the first thing that happened
Joe Giglietti:
Yeah. I'm like, "I think I'm going to go do my own thing." So I went and started a real estate business and was investing in real estate. Really learned marketing there. At first I didn't know I was learning marketing. It was like the general public that's like, you think about marketing you're like, "That's a category." You're like, "Oh yeah, just do some marketing." What does that even mean?
Steve Larsen:
I know it's so fluffy for a while. Yeah, it's totally fluffy for a while.
Joe Giglietti:
So yeah, we did all kinds of stuff then and stuff like that. But I hit rock bottom with the crash of the real estate market back in 2007/2008, and realized that I really wanted to change the world more than anything, more than just make money all the time.
So I started this non-profit student movement. It was when I was in that non-profit student movement I started listening to a show called I Love Marketing. Are you familiar with that Steven?
Steve Larsen:
No, no I'm not actually.
Joe Giglietti:
Joe Polish and Dean Jackson.
Steve Larsen:
Okay.
Joe Giglietti:
That's what I [crosstalk 00:06:46] my teeth on, my gosh.
Steve Larsen:
Very familiar with Joe Polish but not his actual show.
Joe Giglietti:
Yeah, yeah. I learned to market on that show. I started applying it to real estate, which was cool but it was pretty tough, like running a non-profit. I was helping teens, I was in this really poverty stricken area of St. Louis, just trying to change the world there and do it without money. Had a lot of pain.
Steve Larsen:
Yeah, yeah.
Joe Giglietti:
In that process I learned, for me I think, you're obviously a part of that whole want-to-change-the-world community, and what I learned in that time of financial suffering was, yes I know I can make an impact on people's lives. I knew how to take a student whose life was probably going to get messed up and help direct their path, to really make an impact on their life.
That's impact, and then you think about influence and you're like, "How do you that with lots of people?" Influence is like multiplying that one to one thing. Almost like from a sales call to a webinar or something, right?
Steve Larsen:
Yeah, yeah.
Joe Giglietti:
Right, so you go from sale to expanding that to influence, but then the hard lesson I learned is, if I want to change the world as influence grows so do the costs. All those costs were based on my individual ability with real estate and running the non-profit at the same time.
Steve Larsen:
Interesting.
Joe Giglietti:
I just totally failed. I just totally sucked. It was rock bottom for me man, because I was mad at God, I was mad at the world. I was like, "I'm trying to do a good thing here."
Steve Larsen:
Sure.
Joe Giglietti:
"And I'm failing." You know what I'm saying?
Steve Larsen:
Yeah.
Joe Giglietti:
We had huge influence that is all kinds of students being a part of it, but we had to keep shutting it down because we couldn't afford it.
I realized that I can either keep fighting that or I can realize that whatever this whole money aspect is is a part of us doing what we want to do to change the world, and whatever I need to figure out in that process, is going to be the key that helps me loose so that I can multiply my impact, multiply my influence and then multiply my income to pay for that influence and to pay for that expansion. Kind of like we teach in Funnel Hacking, right?
Where it's like, guess what, you could market forever for free to as many people as you want, as long as you can break even at the front end and continually expand your front end, right?
Steve Larsen:
Right.
Joe Giglietti:
Those kinds of ideas really appealed to me. From there, I got connected with you and the ClickFunnels community. I think Russell's first book, DotCom Secrets. The rest is history. I got to tell this story though because it's super fun.
Steve Larsen:
Yeah.
Joe Giglietti:
This stuff is so easy a 10 year old can do it.
Steve Larsen:
A 10 year old does do it.
Joe Giglietti:
Yes. Yes, my daughter in the midst of a broken season, where we were giving up on the non-profit and realized that we had to move into taking care of my family and not just being homeless or anything like that.
Steve Larsen:
Yeah.
Joe Giglietti:
Which we were three times during our process of trying to lead that student movement we were homeless. The final time, I was done, I had spent everything I could emotionally and financially. Drained all of our life insurance accounts, everything, there was nothing. We decided to move to Florida. During that process, my daughter wanted to write a book.
She wanted to start her own little business and I was listening to marketing stuff...
Like everybody, listening but not doing, or doing a little bit here and a little bit there, kind of messing with it. Spend 20 bucks and then be like, "Oh, that didn't work." It's like, $20 is not a test. You know what I'm saying, $20 is not even lunch.
Steve Larsen:
Right, right.
Joe Giglietti:
But yeah, I was doing stupid stuff like that. My daughter wanted to write a book and so we went door to door with it. At least I knew how to sell, so I was able to teach her how to pitch. She went door to door and over the course of less than six months made $20,000, going door to door.
Steve Larsen:
Which is cra ... That's ridiculous, man. When I heard that my jaw dropped to the floor. Everyone who's ever heard that just goes crazy, it's like, "What?" We're like, "Oh my gosh that's insane. That's a huge, huge ... " Now, when was this? That all of this was happening?
Joe Giglietti:
She was 10. It was right before we moved to Florida, almost two years ago. It's funny too because this is a really interesting point and it doesn't relate to funnels. I was trying to change the world but in that process I was ignoring my family and we were sacrificing ourselves for the greater good kind of thing, whatever that means.
When I started investing in my kids and in my family, that's when it all really happened. World change starts at an individual level, and then it expands to the family and then out from there. You can't go out first and bring it back in, it doesn't work that way.
Steve Larsen:
Interesting.
Joe Giglietti:
Yeah. Anyway, she starts selling like crazy, and then some people hear about it and they interview her, and then their show blows up. All of a sudden, she's got all this stuff that they want to sell. Me and my friend, Matt Maddix and Caleb Maddix, I know you know them. If you guys haven't heard of them, they're awesome too.
Steve Larsen:
Yeah.
Joe Giglietti:
We ended working together on a thing called Kids For Success and all kind of door started opening there. I realized, I didn't really love real estate, I loved marketing. That was the whole part of real estate I always did love, was figuring out how to persuade people and get more people to the open house to sell an investment property or whatever, blah blah blah blah blah.
Steve Larsen:
Yeah.
Joe Giglietti:
Matt really encouraged me, I'm thankful for that. He's like, "Dude, you don't love real estate, you love marketing." I'm like, "You are so right." My daughter is what got me into it. It gave me the freedom where now she's traveling the world and speaking, I needed to do something that wasn't just local. I was like, "Cool, I'm going to start marketing," and it's just blown up because I've got focus now.
Steve Larsen:
That door and that whole thing that was happening, that was only a year ago then really?
Joe Giglietti:
Yes. Yeah, yeah. Exactly. As a matter of fact, when my daughter was doing her thing to keep it 100% ... because people always, they look at me now and they're like, "Oh, he's got 80 clients in his marketing agency and he just started it in January. He's crushing it," right? They're like, they have a different view than if I tell at Christmas I was broke.
The reason I was broke is I was broke again. It had been a year since I'd move to Florida but I was broke again because really I was putting everything into my daughter's business, 100% to try and get that off the ground. But I don't want to take anything from my daughter so it wasn't like I was making some buku bucks or anything like that. She was the little seedling that led me to ... Man, I love what I do now. I love what I do.
Steve Larsen:
Isn't it cool? It's so cool too.
Joe Giglietti:
Yes. Yes.
Steve Larsen:
It's addicting.
Joe Giglietti:
Yes.
Steve Larsen:
Every day you get to wake up smiling. I was like, this has been several days which have been honestly I probably should have stayed home, I was sick. But I was like, "I can stay away." It becomes an addiction a little bit.
Joe Giglietti:
Yeah.
Steve Larsen:
It's the other side of it. Most people don't have to worry about loving their job too much or whatever they do too much. It's the [crosstalk 00:13:35] like, "I can't wait for the weekend." It's like the opposite.
Joe Giglietti:
Yeah. No, there are no weekends. It's just like, "Yes," everything I see it's like, "How can I market that better?"
Steve Larsen:
Yeah. This morning I had the same thought. In my head I was like, "Oh, I could go do this with this. I could do this with this." It's like, "Here's a whole brand new funnel type. What? Okay, nevermind. I could go to the office, get to interview Joe."
Joe Giglietti:
It's awesome.
Steve Larsen:
That's cool. About Christmas time then, you're broke, you're going through this experience. You dove into that story a little bit as well pretty deeply, Dan with the Christmas presents, right?
Joe Giglietti:
Yeah. Yeah, so Christmas Eve day. This was very hard to share from the stage. It definitely got everybody's attention though.
Steve Larsen:
Man, it's amazing.
Joe Giglietti:
Because I'm up there teaching on client acquisition and I'm like, "Okay," and this was what, March maybe? I'm like, "Christmas Eve day, I was broke. I did not have enough to buy my kids present. Literally like $20 broke." Dude, I had met with you three months before, right?
Steve Larsen:
Yeah.
Joe Giglietti:
On Emily's stuff, it was like, to be perfectly honest it's what happens to a lot of entrepreneurs, we just go in too many directions man. It's kind of like what you just said, "I could do this, I could do that." There's all this kind of untested and then we're entrepreneurs so we want to try to something really cool, instead of just doing something that you know will work.
Steve Larsen:
Yeah. That's such a disease, it's so true.
Joe Giglietti:
Yes, yes. That's what I was doing. I saw something actually that Dan Henry did, he was teaching on his webinar, on how to get a client fast. He calls it a curious student offer. I put out that offer, getting by at that time, because I couldn't. I just did the curious student offer and it ended up being a guy who was in, he was traveling to Mexico and was going to wire me the money from Mexico.
That's what my hopes and dreams were pinned on on Christmas Eve day, to get a client to help with our marketing, who I knew I could help.
They were actually a real estate investor, so I knew how to do the marketing for them and stuff like that. Yeah, that's what it was. One test, that test, it worked and I was like, "Okay, this is what I want to do. I want to have an agency and help other people. That's an easy sale. All I'm selling is money."
Steve Larsen:
That's amazing. You're using Facebook ads though.
Joe Giglietti:
Yes.
Steve Larsen:
To pull someone in then you add a funnel afterwards. I'm sure at the beginning though, did you have that all set up?
Joe Giglietti:
No. No, no. Okay.
Steve Larsen:
How did that first guy happen?
Joe Giglietti:
The first guy happened, I just put it on my own thing. I did what Dan said. I said, "Hey, I'm learning a whole bunch of things about Facebook ads and I can get you a bunch of results. If you'll just pay for the ad spend, I'll take care of it for you." I had a bunch of people respond and I called, and did sales call like a free consultation type thing.
I asked them, I told them he'd been $1,500 to set everything up and then we were going to do a pay-for-results model off of everything that he did, a certain percentage. He was in. Yeah.
Steve Larsen:
It's amazing.
Joe Giglietti:
It's just that easy. I think you're asking me about the funnel, aren't you Steven? You want to get into the nitty gritty now, don't you.
Steve Larsen:
Into the deets, man. Into the deets. This is super fun because I had very similar situations like that. Where it was like ... When you were telling that story on stage, I couldn't help but think of all the similarities between what you and I I think have gone through.
Where it's like, I was dead broke, wife couldn't eat. It was intense, intense also, and suddenly this massive realization, similar to what you just said, that when an individual focuses on the marketing money comes, but if they focus on the money, no money comes. It's all about focusing in on my marketing and it's ...
Anyway, I just love your story, all the stuff you're getting through.
Joe Giglietti:
I'm not sure how deep you want me to go into that specific funnel because I know that a lot people listening are listening for retail stuff, but at the end of the day to me it isn't which funnel you do. It isn't whether you do a retail funnel or you do a professional services funnel or you do a free book funnel. That isn't what's holding people up. What's holding people up, first of all, it's just fear.
They're afraid to choose...
I talked a lot about this at Ad Con...
They're afraid to choose. They don't know ... that was I was doing, going in lots of different directions. There are so many ways to make money with marketing. It's almost dumb to say, right? It's silly to even make that sentence but there are so many ways as an entrepreneur, especially today with the tools available and the accessibility and the accessibility to the know-how with great podcasts like this. It's easy to get distracted into a thousand different directions.
Steve Larsen:
Totally.
Joe Giglietti:
The first thing you have to do is choose. You have to decide. The word decide comes from the Latin word, incision, becomes the word decision. Decision means to cut off all other options. That's the first thing you have to do. That change, when I went to my wife and I said, "I want to do this."
She said, "I'm tired of you jumping around from thing to thing...
I want you to choose one and I want you to make it happen, and not to move from until it's done, until you've done it, until you've conquered it." I was like, "Okay. I know I love marketing. I know I want to go on in on this 100%." Then it was like, "Okay, what in the marketing world do I want to do?" For me, I want a real ... That's not the right way to say it but, I want a real business in the sense that a lot of times internet marketing, sometimes it's like people think a 20 year old sitting on the couch on their laptop, and that's the business, right?
Steve Larsen:
Yeah.
Joe Giglietti:
If that's your thing, that's cool. I'm not dissing that at all. Have fun, but I want to build a business where I've got 50 or 100 employees and we're doing big things. That's what I want. My thought, like a lot of people, it's kind of cool too, a lot of people want to sell courses, which is awesome. I'll probably sell courses at some point too. I kind of do right now but that's not my of ... I do that to get clients into my business. That's just a lead in to get into my business so that I can actually do the marketing for them. That's what I like to do.
Steve Larsen:
How are you, and I love that...
I was taking notes, every time I interview somebody, and I wrote down, "Decide equals incision, to cut off all other options." That's ama ... I had to do that too, otherwise if you shoot all over the place you actually don't get anything done. You're just staying busy and you confuse action with achievement. It's the biggest, biggest smoking mirror game ever.
Joe Giglietti:
Yes, yes.
Steve Larsen:
Anyway, what are you using in retail then? How's the retail world working with funnels?
Joe Giglietti:
There's a couple of things. I help clients, so I don't own a retail place but I do it for other groups that would be considered retail. Which is kind of weird one to categorize. I'm not sure if you've categorized it for everyone already but it's a weird one to categorize.
It's kind of like the leftover miscellaneous bucket or something like that...
Steve Larsen:
It is, of the six categories it's like, yeah, it's like well because kind of anything could be retail so ... anyway.
Joe Giglietti:
Yeah. First thing, I think the first thing that we're seeing in the retail world is the same thing that I've seen in the real estate world, which is the old methodologies of attracting clients still work.
They still work really, really well because now you can put that same offer up to the world, even though Facebook, all the spoiled internet marketers are like, "Man, Facebook's so expensive now." Because they're used to how it was before but to all of us who are new to it, we're like, "Man, this is awesome."
Steve Larsen:
So cheap, comparatively, yeah.
Joe Giglietti:
Yes, yes. You think about a place like Walgreens, I think of Walgreens when I think of the word retail, right?
Steve Larsen:
Right.
Joe Giglietti:
When you think about how does Walgreens gets cust ... there's a couple things to think about with the retail funnel. The first thing you think about is like, "Really?" A lot of times we think in terms of leads, and one of the things I've learned is, man, I'm about to violate, I'm about to blaspheme. So close your ears Steven.
Steve Larsen:
Do it.
Joe Giglietti:
In some way, in a retail funnel leads are unimportant.
Steve Larsen:
Yeah.
Joe Giglietti:
Right? Because ...
Steve Larsen:
You need walk-ins.
Joe Giglietti:
Yes. The way that that's spoken of a lot of times, not only in the retail funnel area but in some of the more professional services, and there's a lot of cross over, is they talk about it as appointment requests. When you think of a place like Walgreens, they need to get somebody in the door.
We all know, every single one of us listening to this knows how Walgreens gets people in the door.
There's two basic ways. One they have the pharmacy. They've got that, they've got some kind of high value offer that a lot of people can't get and kind of got a corner on the market so to speak, even though CVS is on the other corner. Then the other thing though, and one of the primary ways that they'll use is discounted bread and milk.
Everybody needs bread and milk, and so Walgreens always puts out these pamphlets with the discounted things. It's usually the discounted things, if they're doing a good job, that everybody's going to want.
It's not necessarily some obscure thing that they're not sure, although they've got a pamphlet so they can do that. But I mean like bread and milk at discounted prices gets people in the door, and then once they're in the door they buy other things. In the internet marketing world we call that a crazy discount offer.
That works. It's always worked and it will continue to work, right?
Steve Larsen:
Right.
Joe Giglietti:
The difference is, is now you put that offer in front of ... you figure out what they want, there's a lot of ways to figure that out but you figure out what they want. In most cases, retail establishments already know that.
Like a restaurant, they're a retail establishment. I just moved into a brand new office, super excited about that and ready to hire a bunch of new staff. If you're out there and you want to be hired, come to me, I'm in Florida.
Steve Larsen:
Go to Joe.
Joe Giglietti:
Go to Joe. There's a new pizza place that opened a few doors down. Basically, they wanted help and I'm doing this for free pizza, just because I'm too busy to take on new clients, so I did this one for free and they will not let me pay for pizza anymore.
Steve Larsen:
Wait a second, that's how they're paying you?
Joe Giglietti:
Yeah. They literally offered me the business and I rejected it because as I said at Ad Con, I have too many clients and I need more employees to handle them.
Steve Larsen:
That's hilarious.
Joe Giglietti:
I really wanted to help them because they're a new business. I went in there and I'm like, "Oh, yeah. I own a marketing company," and they're wondering if I'm going to sell to them. I'm like, "Don't worry. I'm too busy, I can't handle you." Then of course they wanted me, right?
Steve Larsen:
Yeah, yeah.
Joe Giglietti:
Yeah, what I did for them is first of all, new opportunity, right? Hello Expert Secrets, new opportunity. It's a new pizza place in the area, so all I did was I had them ... a piece of pizza costs them like 50 cents or 60 cents or something like that.
They're called Slices Pizza, so what I did was, I said, "Okay, let's go a three mile radius and let's choose people who are foodies, which means they're going to like trying new food. We're going to say, 'New pizza place is now available. We're giving away free pizza. Comment below for a free slice and check out the greatest new pizza place in town,' kind of thing."
There was more to the copy obviously, I don't have it in front of me, but the point is free pizza. Crazy discount offer, gets them in the door. Now, here's the thing with those kinds of funnels, notice that I said leads aren't important because if somebody comments, "Free pizza," on that, that doesn't necessarily mean they're going to come on the door.
As a matter of fact, they're probably not going to come on the door, which is the other reason why I'm saying leads aren't important a lot of times in these retail funnels.
What is important, and I sound like a broken record Steven so it's annoying to even say it, I knew this but my marketing didn't operate as if I knew this. It's this, it's all ... Dude, getting leads is so easy. If you're struggling to get leads, just put a crazy discount offer out there. It's very easy to get leads now, right?
Steve Larsen:
Yeah.
Joe Giglietti:
The game, the true game, I can't over emphasize this, is in the follow up. How do you move a lead and convert a lead to an appointment, to a person who walks in the door? That is all about the marketing, which we tend not to think about because we talk about lead generation.
Don't be a lead generator, be a business multiplier. If you're going to be a business multiplier, by the way, the name of my company is Multiply Inc. If you're going to be a business multiplier, you have to convert those leads. If you expect the business owner to do that, they're not, 90% of the time they're not going to do it.
Steve Larsen:
No.
Joe Giglietti:
It's all about creating that follow up process and creating a funnel inside of the funnel to move the person from saying, raising their hand, saying, "I want free pizza," to actually showing up.
Steve Larsen:
100%, I totally get what you're saying. I back it up to the nth degree because the way I got broke into the funnel was very similar as far as, I was building lead gen strategies for Paul Mitchell, local Paul Mitchell stores. I ran into the same problem though, I could drive tons of leads, but after all they're like, "That's kind of cool but no one's walked in." I was like, "Crap, I've got to change the game." So we started running ads for these T3 scalp treatments or whatever.
If you'd walk in and you'd say the magic word or whatever, because that meant that they got to pitch you on their $18,000 student package. You go through a lot of those and actually still break even, have a good business. Anyway, totally, we had to change the funnel. My gosh, no one else I've ever talked to has ever said that, thank you.
Joe Giglietti:
Awesome. Yeah, no, it's huge. I know this is retail but I help a lot of real estate agents because that's my background, and it's like that's how I started the company, and it's like my assumption was and I think many, if you're out there no matter business you're in, the assumption is if I get enough leads I'll close some of those and give very little attention to the conversion process of those.
I have people, it's like, "Yeah. Oh yeah, I got a lead, I called them." Yeah, and what happened? "Oh, I left a message." How long ago was that? "A week."
Steve Larsen:
They're dead, they're not coming.
Joe Giglietti:
Yeah, yeah. It's over. James Sturman actually, he's great at restaurant funnels. If you guys don't know him, he's amazing at restaurant funnels. He's got like, I don't know, 50 to 100 restaurant clients and all of these. Anyways, he's a friend of mine and he has this whole process when people sign up.
Messenger is working really well for a lot of retail stuff, and so having a phenomenal follow up process with a lot of, I know, scarcity, urgency, surprise. Limit it to say seven days, and then you can do a countdown.
You can say, "Oh five days left, oh three days left, two, once," right? Maybe throw in some other bonuses or other things if they show up on certain days, or whatever you can do to try and incentivize that and take it away. That's why, again in the real estate world for me, one house always does better than a list of homes when I'm offering stuff. Why?
Because there's scarcity and urgency to one house. It could be gone. But there's no scarcity and urgency with a list of homes because there'll always be a list of homes available.
Steve Larsen:
Interesting.
Joe Giglietti:
It just works better. But there's one other thing I want to share about retail funnels that I think is really important. If you don't to do, because some people are like, "Dude, I don't want to give away the farm," which is just fear. You don't get it if you're thinking that way.
Apparently Walgreens has figured it out. But nevertheless, the other thing that is really huge for any kind of retail style funnel, and I'm not only saying restaurants or things like that. You'd be surprised the places you can use this, is events. Events.
Steve Larsen:
For retail.
Joe Giglietti:
For retail, yeah, absolutely. Whether it's a chiropractor, which I know that's more professional services, or even a real estate agent, against that's kind of professional services. But a restaurant, hosting an event could be huge. I'm trying to think of other kinds of ... give me an example. Let's play a game Steven.
Steve Larsen:
Let's do it.
Joe Giglietti:
Throw me a business and I'll talk about how you could use an event funnel to crush it.
Steve Larsen:
Let's say the ma and pa style of Walmart, let's say some small version of a grocery store.
Joe Giglietti:
Yeah, awesome. I think businesses do this all the time, but you could do a three day open style event with prizes given away every hour on the hour, and balloons for kids and clown, blah blah blah. Stuff like that, to do some of sort of whatever.
Promoting that to the area, I would probably couple that since again it's a very small ticket items kind of thing, although if they $200 in groceries they're doing good.
I would put a discount funnel, crazy discount on certain items to get them in the door along with this whole thing for the kids, if that's your target audience, and some sort of event that's associated with that. Events, again, have some sort of scarcity and urgency attached to them, and so it helps. Also, it requires them to get in the door.
If they get in the door, now that mom and pop can do a one to one sell, but if they don't get them in the door and get them connecting to them or scheduling an appointment ... You could even do specific hours, specific offers that area available at specific hours. You could do segmented times to send people to and stuff like that, "Okay, at this hour we're giving away XYZ, it's 50% off in the meat department."
Something like that. Again, just scarcity and urgency is huge.
Steve Larsen:
It makes sense too because you see the event game being played like crazy. I'm thinking of all the car commercials, "Come in for the Thanksgiving event," and then a little later, "Come in for this Christmas even," a little bit later, "Come in for New Year's event," then whatever it is. It's always the event and it seems like it's going to right right then. Yeah, that's interesting. That's interesting.
Joe Giglietti:
Yeah, it's like, so many of the people, right now I'm helping a bunch of digital marketers get a bunch of new clients because obviously I've done okay with that. They want help. It's funny because a lot of the marketers need help getting their own clients because it's a different thing to get a marketing client than it is to help whatever their specific funnel is that they're running.
One of the things I've seen though just again and again and again, is they, again, they depend on leads. This whole thing is not about leads. I help agents, and I'll get them ... I have an agent I got 500 leads for in a matter of two and a half months. He closed zero of them. As a matter of fact, he didn't even move them to an appointment.
Steve Larsen:
Really?
Joe Giglietti:
How is that even possible? It's because, again, they have no follow up funnel. With people like that, when I'm realizing, and again this applies to the entire retail world but it's like, if I take that same guy and instead of doing all these other promotions I'm doing, if I just do an open house and get a bunch of people to an open house, now they're face to face.
They can't skip the call. They can't skip the voice mail and then he never calls again. He meets some people one on one and he'll get some deals out of that. Again, that straight up the whole goal for me of retail, is to get them face to face. If you don't get them face to face, you're not really doing the job with a funnel, you may get something out of it but it's not guaranteed at all.
Steve Larsen:
Yeah, that's really interesting. There was, I can't remember who said. It was Joe Polish, Joe Polish said this too.
He said, "Sales is what happens face to face, but the marketing is how you get them to your face."
Joe Giglietti:
Beautiful.
Steve Larsen:
I love that. I love that.
Joe Giglietti:
I wish I was that awesome and could get good quotes like that.
Steve Larsen:
I know, right? What can I say that's prolific today? I'm not trying to make a big ploy for ClickFunnels here, even if it's the best software on the planet.
Joe Giglietti:
Yes, Amen. Preaching to the choir brother.
Steve Larsen:
Those funnels though are amazing though. It really is how we get everything done. If we just left everything on the table, even in whatever it is we're doing, whether it's one of Russell's clients or whatever it is, any front end funnel we do, if that's where we leave it, just like you've said, our only expectation is to break even.
All that did is open up the gate. If someone took something free, in fact I just ranted about this to someone the other day.
I was like, someone who takes something that's free, like a free plus ... Or not even a free plus shipping. If it's some free thing, I don't even consider that a lead per se. That's just somebody who wants something for free. You've got to do something else to qualify him.
Anyway, so essentially in the retail world, you'll run some kind of ad, obviously talking about the free thing or the event or whatever it is. And then afterwards follow up with ... what's the most common follow up funnel you usually do for a retail space?
Joe Giglietti:
A lot of it can be, for retail space it's funny enough, we follow up, yes, directly with the person who's interested in the product or service kind of thing that they're coming for. Usually that's going to be text.
Text is working way better obviously, a lot of email's not getting opened up. Messenger is great, that's why we're using a lot of, not even necessarily bots just getting conversations starting in Messenger. May use a bot for the first one, and then when they reply get into that engaged conversation to move them to an appointment.
That works really well...
Obviously the text follow up, using Actionetics. Actionetics, go all in. I can't give my affiliate link here, this is Steven's show, but...No, but yeah, and Actionetics...but that's the basics. Then of course, please tell me, so many people are still not retargeting. I remember when I was like, "Yeah, yeah. I'll get to that but that's more complex, I just want to blah blah blah." Dude, I was such an idiot. When you start retargeting, my gosh. Can I tell a story about follow up?
Steve Larsen:
Yeah, please do.
Joe Giglietti:
Do we still have time?
Steve Larsen:
Yeah, we have plenty of time.
Joe Giglietti:
My gosh. This is about a realtor but it will make sense to everybody. Like I said, I have some of these agents who are in who are like, they'll get couple hundred leads and literally maybe follow up once. They're doing terrible, so then I've been following this guy, he's got great marketing. I'm going to go ahead and say his name, even though I don't know him personally, Jonathan Zabrocki.
This dude does $900,000 a year in commissions by himself. He has no assistant, he has no team. He does it by himself because he doesn't want to work a lot he says. He only wants to work 20 hours a week. Here's the thing, here's the thing. He does it, because he doesn't want to work a lot, he only allows himself 16 leads per month. One six.
Steve Larsen:
Because he closes that many of them, right?
Joe Giglietti:
Yeah. So what he does is, and this will point to it, this dude's ... I'm super impressed with the guy, I can't wait to meet him. I've been following him for a long time. I know this is true just because I've been following him for so long, that or he's really consistent with his story and a really good liar, but I don't think so.
What he does is when he gets a lead ... By the way, he's spending, I'm getting leads right now for people at $1, $2, some higher end real estate deal $8, whatever. He doesn't want to get a lot of leads so he doesn't use any of those sources.
He gets leads and they end up costing him like $500 a piece. They're no better leads. I know how he gets them, they're no better leads than normal leads I'm getting for five bucks. It's really funny. But anyways, here's the thing, when he gets a lead come in, he treats it like gold.
He calls them, emails them and texts them three times each per day. Nine total contacts per day for seven days, until he gets in touch with them.
I'm listening to this one day and I'm like, "This is nonsense." People get ticked off, right? I was, "I'm so mad at myself that I even thought that, I feel like suck an average guy."
I feel like a loser for even saying it right now, because I went ahead and said, "I'm going to try it." So I started trying it with some of my older contacts, people who were looking to get in and stuff like that.
I said, "Okay, here's what we're going to do." I get my sales team together, I'm like, "We're going to follow up. We're going to call them three times a day, we're going to text them three times a day, and we're going to email them three times a day, every lead that comes in." They looked at me like, "Are you an idiot?"
Steve Larsen:
Yeah, because the fear is that you're going to tick people off. I totally get that.
Joe Giglietti:
Yeah.
Steve Larsen:
Yeah.
Joe Giglietti:
Yeah. It was like, he had mentioned, "You're probably afraid you're going to scare people but ... " It's an old ... I can't remember his name now. Dan, Dan Hardy, Dan Hardy.
Dan Hardy says, "If you're very aggressive in your follow up you'll lose one out of five but you'll get the other four." I was like, "Cool." I was like, "Alright, I'm going to try this. What do I have to lose, they're just old leads, right?" I started following up like crazy, like he said.
Now, full disclosure, I could not keep up. I could not do nine. I was trying, because it's personal, it wasn't automated. It's very personal.
We did it, follow up, follow up, follow up, text, text, text, voicemail, voicemail, voice ... being really cool about it, not being like, "Hey, I've called you three times." No, it's just super cool, you know people are busy. Dude, it was almost every time between the seventh and tenth time, people would either call or text back, and the first words out of their mouth were, "I'm so sorry I haven't gotten back with you."
Steve Larsen:
Are you serious?
Joe Giglietti:
I'm serious.
Steve Larsen:
That's not what you would expect.
Joe Giglietti:
No, because the level of professionalism, nobody does that. The fact that you keep bringing it and keep trying to serve them, you do it with the right attitude and bring it in front of them, they feel guilty because they know they asked for...They're a lead, right, they requested for you to contact them.
We forget that so much. Just that level of intensity with follow up and it was like, I kept counting, we would go through the text when somebody would finally respond and go through our notes and notations. It was like eight times, 10 times, seven times, 12 times, six times.
I was like, "Oh my gosh, I am losing so much money because I'm so good at getting leads, I don't value them." But here is this dude, he gets 16 leads a month, out of 16 leads he gets eight appointments, and out of eight appointments he gets four or five transactions.
Steve Larsen:
Every month.
Joe Giglietti:
Every month, like clockwork.
Steve Larsen:
That's amazing. 25% close rate from your ...
Joe Giglietti:
Leads.
Steve Larsen:
... from your leads. That's actually really high.
Joe Giglietti:
Yes.
Steve Larsen:
That's awesome, especially in real estate.
Joe Giglietti:
Yeah, compare that to say getting 100 leads from people and not doing a good job of following up and getting two or three. But you still call all 100 of them, and still only get one to three them closing. Instead you could be like, "I'll just take a few of them and treat them really, really well. Reach out to each of them nine times."
Then you need a tenth the number of leads and can still get the same results.
Steve Larsen:
That's so awesome.
Joe Giglietti:
Yeah.
Steve Larsen:
Okay, wait, wait, wait, so is there much of a difference that you're seeing when you're running ... You go get the ad, the ad starts driving in leads. Because I know that a lot of times in the internet marketing world selling marketing to marketers, there's usually a difference in the environment, I have to put them in or the funnel in order to go to different price points.
Is it the same way with retail? Meaning, can I sell high ticket stuff?
It sounds like that guys is already if he's selling houses. Do you use the same strategy though for a $7 pizza? That level of high touch intensity, or is there some other strategies for other retail businesses like that?
Joe Giglietti:
I guess the answer is yes and no. Again, because my focus may be on the target audience. Someone that I'm working with right now, he's got a limo company, but they like these corporate high end clients. Those clients are obviously way different than somebody who's just trying to get a cheap limo for the prom one night or something like that.
There would be a difference in the offer but again, that's lead generation, front end. You figure out what they want and you put that in front of them and do what you can to remove risk or stack value if they do it.
But if you drive that to, like for example one thing we're liking to do right now is when someone opts in, the next page, this is a big secret we're really testing out right now. I can't believe I'm sharing this right now.
Steve Larsen:
I can, keep going.
Joe Giglietti:
Every single person who goes to a thank you page, in all of our funnels, retail and some of the others as well, we're always trying to drive that and give some sort of bonus or added value to get them to schedule an appointment, either on Calendly or even if it's an even to schedule a specific time to get a private access tour, a private this, private that, whatever, like one on one access with the owner or whoever the character is who's leading that business kind of thing.
Everything, I don't care if it's a limo company, I don't care if it's a restaurant, I don't care what it is, if I can drive them to actually schedule an appointment, that's again, I'm telling you, the name of the game is appointments not leads. Everything is pushing them though, and then by the way, all the retargeting is pushing them to the appointment, not just to be a lead. Does that make sense?
On that thank you page ...
Steve Larsen:
Yeah.
Joe Giglietti:
... we've got different options, and really it doesn't matter what, it depends on what they want but it could be two or three different things that we think that we're split testing or seeing how many do.
Whichever they click, those are all leading them to schedule appointment. It may be about being at the special event, or it may be about getting this other free bonus, or it may be about having a one on one conversation with the owner, but they're all really just trying to get an appointment.
Steve Larsen:
That's fascinating. What's so interesting to me is how different the sales process is for different industries.
Because again, back to, heavily in the internet marketing world as far as selling marketing to marketers, if I leave it up to somebody to call, like schedule an appointment, almost all the time, it's like let's say like Russell's high end coaching funnel, first there's an application funnel, the very last part says, "Hey, thanks so much for applying. We'll go ahead and give you a call, but if you want to jump ahead of the line, go ahead and give us a call," you know?
Joe Giglietti:
Right.
Steve Larsen:
The reason why is because when we used to put scheduling software on that stuff or we'd send them to Calendly, no one would ever show up, no one would ever call us, no one ever ... that's interesting that it's different when it's off the phones and it's in a different industry, that that actually works like crazy. That's an interesting difference there.
Joe Giglietti:
Listen, we're perfecting it. That's something that we're pushing. We've seen results, it's like, "Okay, why is this working?" Trying to drive that in other areas because I think you're right. Probably one to two out of five of our schedule appointments don't show.
Steve Larsen:
But the ones that do are probably rock stars.
Joe Giglietti:
Well yeah. That, and it's like it's not like these business owners in retail settings are getting a lot of these anyways. It's not like, "Oh man, my schedule is booked with 20, I could have had two more." You know what I'm saying?
Steve Larsen:
Right.
Joe Giglietti:
If they have four or five appointments a day and three show, they can make a lot of money just off of those, because you know what I'm saying? The no-show doesn't really bother us, I mean obviously you do things like indoctrination sequences and stuff like that, just like you do with webinars to get them to show up and come with value and stuff like that.
Steve Larsen:
Interesting.
Joe Giglietti:
Just as an example, for me to get clients, digital marketing. I don't if I'd do a retail funnel or not, but I'm helping digital marketers in all kinds of different niches get a bunch of appointments.
It's the same thing, it's all about the appointment. Once you get the appointment, your original question was, "What if it's high price versus low price and stuff like that?" If you're going to sell one to one with a sales person or get someone in the door, schedules appointments. Think about it, like a chiropractor. They'll do a $21 exam.
Steve Larsen:
Sure, sure.
Joe Giglietti:
Right? To get somebody in the door kind of thing. That can be a high price, it's low price there but it's high price later.
Steve Larsen:
It's fascinating man. I'm geeking out with you so bad now.
Joe Giglietti:
Good.
Steve Larsen:
I've got notes all over the place. This is so cool. This is so cool. That's awesome. You've done several different retail areas then. I know you're kind of all over the ... not many people ... I really think that you're such a rare person, to be able to go out and become an expert at something that's retail, something that's professional services, something...You know what I mean? Crossing industry like that, that's not an easy thing to do.
What types of retail businesses, I guess full spectrum, do you actually do for this? Let's say someone wanted to contact you, what are the full retail suite services that you use? You know what I mean?
Joe Giglietti:
Yeah. One of the things that I think is really important to everybody listening is that they focus. I've already talked about that a little bit. And then, once you get to a place and you can start hiring people to handle different options, you can take off focus.
One of the, quote-unquote, retailer is, would be digital marketers helping other digital marketers doing other retail funnels, like I'm helping them right now. I actually have a wait list of 30 people right now, because I've got to hire somebody else before I can pick up some more.
Steve Larsen:
That's crazy.
Joe Giglietti:
But nevertheless, yeah, so digital marketers. I've got some doing limos, I've got a digital marketer who just started, we just broke through his funnel, we're getting appointments. We got him an appointment today with his first $2 and 50 cents on ad spend with a roofing company who will pull in probably 2,500 a month. So yes, those kinds of areas, gyms, MMA, restaurant.
Usually I refer everything that I have on restaurant to my friend James Sturman, he's the man. I know I'm not supposed to do this, right? I'm a marketer, I'm supposed to promote myself, but there's lots of good guys out there doing some of this retail stuff.
If people are interested in talking to me about any kind of retail stuff or anything like that, I would recommend they message me on Facebook on my business page at Joe Giglietti.
Steve Larsen:
Sure.
Joe Giglietti:
That's Joe and then Giglie T-T-I, G-I-G, L-I-E, T-T-I. If we don't handle it, I've got plenty of friends who are doing ... I've got friends who are doing events for bars, that's a big one by the way. Bars and events, dude, you can get 50 bars who you can help and just do events, every week do events.
Steve Larsen:
I've actually have heard that, yeah. Yeah, with the bars specifically. That's awesome.
Joe Giglietti:
One of my guys is helping Bellator MMA, there's a retail funnel. How is that for a retail event? What is it? You're just selling tickets to an event. They're doing the zoo, I think the LA Zoo he's doing, which is pretty cool. Just stuff like that. Funnels work for everything guys. I know [inaudible 00:49:12] but it's like ... yeah, like, what do you want to do? You can figure it out, it's fun.
Steve Larsen:
Man, it's so cool. It's so cool. Now, two other things here. Your recently told a story to me, when I originally jumped out and said, "Hey, would you mind jumping on here?" About you turning away 25 people. Do you mind sharing that, because that was amazing?
Joe Giglietti:
Yeah. I don't know, I hope. You know how it is. I don't want to be like that guy. I don't want to be like a jerk, like, "I'm the man," or something like that.
Steve Larsen:
Sure. No, that's you focusing though. We'll say that's in the name of focus.
Joe Giglietti:
In the name of focus, yeah.
Steve Larsen:
So it's okay now.
Joe Giglietti:
Cool. Yeah, so I focused. I've got a little soliloquy about that if you guys want it.
Steve Larsen:
Yeah.
Joe Giglietti:
But I made the commitment on January first, I read a book. "Amazing Joe." No, I read actually a page of a book and had to shut it. It was the book, Tools of Titans by Tim Ferriss. It was the are where Peter Thiel, who's a billionaire, most of you should know who Peter Thiel is. He started PayPal and another couple other billion dollar companies.
Not a bad entrepreneur...
Steve Larsen:
Sure, sure.
Joe Giglietti:
He said, "Listen," he's like, "If you want to be a billionaire, you've got to think like a billionaire." Tim Ferriss said, "What do you mean?" He said, "Well, here's the deal. What I want you to do is I want you to think about your 10 year goals." If you're listening to this podcast right now, do that with me.
Let's do the exercise, think about your 10 year goals. Maybe it's financial, whatever it is, hopefully it's financial if you're listening to this. Now, you got it? Peter Thiel looks at Tim Ferriss and says, "Now ask yourself this question, what would it take for you to do it in six months?"
When I read that, Steven, I literally slammed the book shut in books-a-million and I'm like, "What just happened?" Like, "Dude rocked my world." Of course, all of the fear, all the worry, all the reasons why it couldn't happen just jumped into my heart. I'm like, "No, no, no," and there's this fear. I was like, "Wait, this dude's a billionaire. Don't argue with him. Try and listen to what he's saying."
I opened the book back up and then he's talked a little bit more and he's like, "Hey, if you're struggling with this idea, then think of a goal you can believe is possible in six months, but make yourself stretch."
When I read that I said to myself, "I want to make $100,000 a month. I can do that. I can build a business to get to 100,000 a month in six months."
So I focused, I started by focusing on real estate agents. I figured if I can get 50 real estate agents, I can get there. I figured, my whole focused shifted to how do I get a client? If I can figure out how to get a client, I can repeat that. I realized, I remember something Russell said, he said, "You need a KPI, a Key Performance Indicator."
So I made my Key Performance Indicator, I need five appointments a day. If I get five appointments a day I can sell on out of five, because two won't show. That became my key, then it was like, "Well how do I get five appointments a day?"
I realized I didn't want to cold call like crazy. I'd done that world with real estate and I was like, "I'm going to figure it out. I know it's possible. I don't know how I'm going to do it." Dude, I hope I'm not taking too long.
Steve Larsen:
No, I love it.
Joe Giglietti:
Yeah. What I did is I started by spending $20 a day testing out a funnel to get people, an appointment funnel, get people to a page, show them a demo and try and get them to click. I had to figure out the offer and all that kind of stuff. I was spending $20 a day and I kept stopping it, didn't work, changed it, stopping it, didn't work, changed it, stopping it, didn't work, changed it.
Then one day I'm like, "Why don't I wait a whole day to try and figure out a funnel? Why don't I just put $200 on it and as soon as it spends $20 just turn it off?" Because in my mind, for whatever reason, $20 was the magic number to test something. I'm an idiot, I know.
Steve Larsen:
I don't think so. I don't think anyone listening will agree with that either.
Joe Giglietti:
So then, being the typical entrepreneur that I am, I put $200, said, "Okay, good. I'll know in a couple hours. I'll just check back on it." Would you know it, I got busy and forgot, and the kids, and blah blah blah. I fell asleep and woke up the next morning. I had like five or six appointments and I'm like, "Oh my gosh, it worked."
I go to my Facebook and I look and I'm like, "Oh my gosh, I spent $200." I was scared. I'm like, "Why am I scared? I got five, this is good." I went ahead and did the appointments, I think I sold two of them or something like that. I'm like, "Wait a second, maybe I should spend $200 again."
I wonder how many of those other funnels actually worked, I was just too scared to let them run, to really see....
Steve Larsen:
We see that all the time. Someone will come back and be like, "I spent $10 and nothing happened." Or they're like, "I Facebook Lived two times. My first time ever and no one attended." You're like, "Two times? I have been doing this for years." It's like, "Come on." Anyway ...
Joe Giglietti:
Anyways, that whole story just leads to, so then it broke open. I couldn't turn my marketing on. I couldn't keep up with five appointments a day. I had over 50 clients within my six months. I didn't hit my $100,000 goal a month though because a lot of my clients are pay on results and realtors can take 90, 120 days.
Then we also learned, some of these realtors aren't so good at closing deals so we started adjusting and figuring out those appointment funnels on the backend to try and get them in front of more. I'm not there yet. I'm very close.
I'm very close now and I think in the next month or two I should hit it. But then I said, "Yay, I'm free. I focus for six months. [inaudible 00:55:01] now, who do I want to help? And I decided I wanted to help digital marketers, because that was one thing I'm really good at, is getting lots of clients for myself, so I'm like, "Uh, that would be so fun to work with other marketers, or so cool."
I put an ad on, I have a group that I share with a couple friends, it's called Journey To Seven Figures. I put not an ad, I just put out there my offer. I figured out how to make really good offers and I put an offer out there. In 48 hours, no I mean immediately, how many hours was it?
I don't know how soon it was, I can only let my schedule schedule out three days because I found people don't show up if it's more than three days in advance.
I know that it's scheduled out and we had 45 scheduled appointments, every single space was booked for 12 hours a day. I did 22 one on one calls, because I couldn't do it my sales guy because I hadn't trained him how to help with digital marketer yet.
So I did 22 sales calls, 20 of them bought immediately and I shut the doors on something called the 20K challenge, where I do the marketing for these marketers, to get them a bunch of clients, and they only pay me for results.
Every time they close a deal, they pay me, and a little bit upfront. Yeah, so in 36 hours, because I filled up quickly, I had 20 clients and 25 on the wait list. I think that's a world record with zero dollars in ad spend.
Zero dollars in ad spend in a group of 300 people, I got ... Yeah, so it's all about I guess making a good offer and figuring out how to get that one funnel working. An appointment funnel can absolutely change your life.
Steve Larsen:
Fascinating. The appointment funnel itself, that's amazing. Last question, I know I keep saying last question.
Joe Giglietti:
No, it's okay.
Steve Larsen:
It's so fun to geek out with you man, this has been awesome. I've been looking so forward to this. You're running a Facebook ad to an appointment page? What are you saying on this page to try and actually get the appointment?
Joe Giglietti:
Actually, with this most recent one, it was such ... Here's the thing. Man, you're pulling it out of me, man. When you're selling digital marketing or even marketing services to somebody, I think what most people miss is that you're not selling marketing. Too many people sell marketing and if you look at your news feed, too many people are selling, quote-unquote, Facebook ads, or selling, quote-unquote, funnels.
Nobody wants a funnel...
Steve Larsen:
No.
Joe Giglietti:
Nobody wants a Facebook ad.
Steve Larsen:
No one knows what it is even.
Joe Giglietti:
Yeah, yeah, exactly. What they want is money. That's what I sell. When I figured out that I sell money, then it became this, and I learned this from Dean Jackson. This will help anybody in any kind of world when you think about it. When you ask yourself the question, why wouldn't somebody buy from me?
When I ask that question, I sell money, why wouldn't somebody buy money on a discount. If I came to you and said, "Hey Steven, if you give me $1,000 I'll give you $10,000."
Steve Larsen:
I'm going to say yes.
Joe Giglietti:
Why wouldn't you do that. Yeah, you're going to say yes because you believe me, you trust me, you know I've got the skills to pay the bills and all that stuff. But some guy who just saw me for the first time on a Facebook ad is rolling his eyes. It's like, why wouldn't they? Because they're afraid. They're afraid that they'll lose. They're afraid that it's too good to be true.
The same offer shifted changed my business. Man, how am I giving you this stuff? Here we go. I shifted the offer. Anyways, I'm just going to say it. I shifted the offer where I say, "Look, Steven, how about I make you $10,000 and when I make you $10,000 you give me 1,000?" Is that better or worse.
Steve Larsen:
That's amazing.
Joe Giglietti:
Right. The whole idea, and you're seeing this in the digital marketing world, only pay for results kind of thing, it's taking off. Now, that doesn't mean ... because all of you are like, "Oh, you're going to get all these clients who blah blah blah blah." No, you can qualify them. By the way, I don't get any money, quote-unquote, but I do get a deposit where if I hit this number I get to keep it, where I'm 100% certain I'm going to hit that number every time.
They're not 100% certain but I am, but I need to take a deposit because you could rip me off.
You can make the money and then not pay me, so I'm going to go ahead and take a deposit, but here's the contract, blah blah blah blah blah. What am I doing? I'm giving the same offer, I'm just removing the risk. If we think more about how to shift our offers where we ... actually you'll make more by doing it this way because you can charge more on results. But if we can shift our offers to putting all of the risk on ourselves, but to us it's not a risk because we know that we can perform, dude, it's a win-win.
I charge people way more than I could charge them upfront, simply because I'm only paid on results for many of my customers, not all of them but many.
Steve Larsen:
That's awesome. That's kind of what goes back to what you were saying before, similar to the Dan Henry thing. That it's the hungry curious student offer but extended into an actual way beyond that first client. That's fascinating.
Joe Giglietti:
Yeah.
Steve Larsen:
Results first.
Joe Giglietti:
Absolutely.
Steve Larsen:
Imagine that still works.
Joe Giglietti:
Shocker, right?
Steve Larsen:
Shocker. What?
Joe Giglietti:
Yeah, I invented that. I did.
Steve Larsen:
You did.
Joe Giglietti:
Oh yeah...
Steve Larsen:
That's cool. What that does too is that it protects the person's status. I think that's so cool. Goes back to that status protection, how do they gain, how do they lose it? You're protecting it so that they can't lose their own status emotionally. That's fantastic.
Joe Giglietti:
Yeah. With that, I want to encourage everybody out there, I've got a little soliloquy, like when I was thinking about this morning what I was going through I've gotten to the place I am. I'm not bragging here, I'm just telling the honest truth.
When I have enough employees, I promise you, getting 100 new clients a month, I could do it right now, I just can't take care of them. What was stopping me though was fear. Fear is robbing the world. It's robbing you who are listening.
I put on an offer almost every day right now that will help people grow their business, they don't even have to pay me unless I actually multiply their business, and yet thousands, even tens of thousands of people pass me up on the offer. Why? Why would somebody pass up?
They're afraid. They're afraid it's too good to be true. They're afraid it won't work. They're afraid it won't work for them. They're afraid of success. They're afraid of what it will look like if it does work or doesn't work. That's you, that's me robbing ourselves of our potential. I was afraid to hire. I was afraid of what big expenses may do to my business, failing to see what great revenues it would bring to my business.
Fear, we're afraid to focus. We're afraid to make a decision. Why? Because we're afraid to lose out on another opportunity that we didn't decide upon. But I'm calling upon all of you who are listening today to face your fear. I'm asking you to believe. I'm asking you to believe in the possibility, to believe that your potential is bigger than your present reality.
What is it about an impossible offer to refuse that makes it so refusable? What are you afraid of? Whatever it is, I assure you it can be defeated, no matter how large your fear or how substantial your trepidation.
I promise you, your potential, what you're actually capable of doing when you believe, is vastly more substantial, more significant and importantly more real than the fear that's crippling your full ability. Today I call on everybody who's listening to this to face your fear.
I call on you to shake of your shackles of indecision and step into your calling of possibilities with courage and belief, because the day you decide, the day you focus, the day you plant your flag in the ground and say, "This is my place. I'm going to own my space until I decide not to," the day that you commit and refuse to be governed by the inconsequential whispers of a liar named fear and step into your potential from the confident place of belief, is the day you will begin to change your own life and the world.
Steve Larsen:
Everyone, go check out Facebook.com/joegiglietti. We're going to end it right there man.
Joe Giglietti:
My pleasure, nice being on the show. Go get it guys. Go change the world.
Steve Larsen:
That was fantastic, I don't want to say anything else and mess it up.
Amazon, Walmart, Etc. Secrets of the ecommerce world ...
What's going on, everyone? This is Steve Larsen and you're listening to another fantastic episode of Sales Funnel Radio. Now, this episode is part three of our six-part series where I'm diving deep into the six different categories of people using ClickFunnels to blow up their businesses.
This episode is all about eCommerce and there's a lot of ways to pull off eCommerce, there's a lot of ways to do it, and a lot of questions that everyone know who's in eCom has the answer from their beginning. Am I going to self-fulfill? Am I going to drop ship? Am I going to go for high ticket, low ticket, high volume? Am I going to brand it?
Is it just going to be a straight sell and one off? Is it going to be community behinder? Am I going to be the brand behind it?
There's a lot of things involved with eCommerce much like any business but I think I really enjoy what my guest today has to offer. I would take notes, see how he's doing it. He's got a great community behind him called ecomunderground.com and he's got a cool little offer for you guys at the end which I think you'll enjoy. Anyway, massive value, it's free for you so anyway, I think you guys will enjoy it.
Let's jump into this episode and we got three others coming up deep into the industries that I know out of one of the six applies directly to your business. I hope you guys will enjoy the series so far, let's jump right into it.
Announcer:
Welcome to Sales Funnel Radio where you'll learn marketing strategies to grow your online business using today's best internet sales funnels and now, here's your host, Steve Larsen.
Steve Larsen:
All right, guys. How is it going? I have with me a very special guest today and honestly one of my favorite categories of sales on the internet in general, very excited to learn more of the deep, dark ninja secrets of how to make this work. We're going to talk about eCom strategies today with the expert and my friend, Bryan Bowman.
How are you doing, man?
Bryan Bowman:
I'm doing amazing. How are you doing, Steve?
Steve Larsen:
I'm doing awesome, living the dream. Doing really good. Hey, thanks for being on the show here, like I say and eCom is probably one of my favorite, one of my favorite personal category for income generation, whether someone doing it on the side or it's a full-time thing.
What a lot of people would probably realize is that when Russell went out and hired this data scientist to come through and look up through all the users of ClickFunnels and try and find patterns, eCom was actually the highest revenue generating industry overall out of all of them.
Everything, info products, I mean anything. If you guys want to pay attention, I mean, get a piece of paper out, take notes.
Bryan is going to drop some massive gold here and super excited for you guys to learn more about eCom which is a space I'm personally very interested in as well.
Anyways, Bryan, if you can just let us know how did you even get into eCommerce? It's a newish industry as far as kind of the wave of the internet taken over things.
Bryan Bowman:
Yeah, yeah, for sure, man. I mean, first of all, just to back up what you're saying, there is something really powerful about selling physical products.
Steve Larsen:
It's so cool.
Bryan Bowman:
This is something that I'll talk about a little bit but I do want to talk about how you don't have to choose one or the other and this is really what a big part of my message is right now because it's what we're doing in our brands and it's what's working in my community with my students is that what I have found, because I'm really, really entrenched in the physical product sellers universe or world. There is this mindset that it has to be one or the other.
Where I'm really shaking things up is I'm telling people that we can have it all and physical products have their own power but info products have their own power as does a third category of product that I'm going to encourage those who really want to build a well-rounded business and a business that's going to be sellable and build an empire that I think they need to have as well.
We'll leave that for a minute and I'll answer your question, I'll answer the first part of this which kind of like my backstory. Yeah, man, I've been involved in selling I guess products online or physical products for a long time.
For me, it was really a hobby like literally all the way back to college I was buying, it was crazy, I would buy books and I still to this day I'm understanding why this worked but it's still a little confusing to me. I would buy books on eBay and then turn around and sell them on Amazon. The quickest arbitrage ever.
Steve Larsen:
It's straight up arbitrage, that's awesome.
Bryan Bowman:
That is available to everyone like everyone can go on eBay but I mean, I'm kind of joking like not understanding why. I mean, it's because of the confidence Amazon has.
People trust Amazon so much so some people feel like a little sketchy about eBay, maybe they don't want to buy from there and literally I would buy textbooks for five bucks and sell them for 55 on Amazon. It was crazy.
Steve Larsen:
Geez.
Bryan Bowman:
That was like a little side gig in college but I've been always leveraging the internet to sell physical products but really where it got really serious for me was about four years ago and for some of your listeners, they maybe selling on Amazon or maybe they've heard about this Amazon gold rush that's happening and four years ago it's kind of the wild west.
I mean, FBA was around but not a lot of people were using it. That's where I started and basically FBA is where you can send in all your products to Amazon. They fulfill the orders and you just create the brand and ship everything off and then list on Amazon. Now, that was awesome.
You're leveraging Amazon's traffic which is very cool.
At the time, I need to figure out what I was going to do because we've talked about this a little bit, Steve. My wife was having some health issues and we were just trying to figure out what do we do because I needed to be home more, there's no way I could keep working my corporate job as actuarial consultant like traveling all over the place.
I needed to figure out a side hustle that was going to make some extra money and ultimately free me from my job and that's really why I double down.
Literally I would work all day long in a cubicle like nine to five either traveling, doing actuarial stuff, come home, eat dinner, and from like 7 PM till 3 in the morning, I was creating listings, working with my designers in Germany.
Then I was talking to manufacturers in China at 1 AM because they are like on the complete opposite time as us in the U.S. and I'd be Skyping with them, seeing the factory, seeing samples. It was crazy.
That's how we launched our first brand on Amazon and started leveraging that platform and really pretty quickly I think maybe because I had that actuarial background and understood the numbers which is another huge, huge thing guys.
Those of you listening, I don't care what you're selling in your funnels and whatever industry you're in, you have to know your numbers. People usually don't like to talk about math, they shy away from it but you need to know basic stuff, cost per conversion, lifetime value of a customer, your cost of goods, those metrics they are going to separate you from the pack because of that very reason, no one else wants to think about those things.
Steve Larsen:
It's true, then you have to think about Excel sheets and that's hard and you have to think about ... It's kind of a big locked gate, a little bit to that industry a little bit.
Bryan Bowman:
Exactly, exactly. Listen, I love barriers to entry, it's why I became an actuary. I became an actuary, for those of you who don't know what it is, don't worry. If you have kids or brothers or sisters who are really good at math, tell them to go be an actuary if they are not going to become professional sellers online like internet marketer or sellers.
Basically, having that background in stats and math, it helped me with my advertising on Amazon, ultimately, it now helped me with my Facebook advertising and in AdWords like understanding those numbers. I can't stress enough how important it is. If you're not that person, find somebody who's really good with numbers.
Steve Larsen:
How would I find someone like that? I mean, because that is a barrier, you know what I mean? That's a personal barrier to entry. How would I find some dude that actually go out and do that kind of thing?
Bryan Bowman:
I mean, we could have a whole conversation about this. I use VAs so what I do is I will set up the basic spreadsheet and then I have them, I train them on how to download reports, upload the reports and send me a summary so that I just get like an executive summary about every week.
Steve Larsen:
Okay.
Bryan Bowman:
They do the work that probably most of us, I mean, I don't really like, I kind of like being in spreadsheets but not all day.
Steve Larsen:
Right.
Bryan Bowman:
What they're good at like because I have SOPs in place they can download the reports that are already, this certain reports that are already set, they can upload them, they can refresh the workbooks and basically, just send me the summary that's already built in to the workbook and then I just can have a look at it, overview it and then make any changes that need to be made.
There are plenty of people Upwork, you can go to, what is it now? Is it Elance? Is that what it's called now?
Steve Larsen:
Freelancer.
Bryan Bowman:
I mean, like I said I train my VAs one on one so I use onlinejobs.ph.
Steve Larsen:
Cool.
Bryan Bowman:
Even if you want to hire someone domestically like in the U.S. look at community colleges like see if there's some math students or someone who's in a business program, someone who's technical that's looking to pick up a few extra hours.
I think it's important to have that person whether it's you or not in the business though because it's huge.
Steve Larsen:
I believe there are eCom people that I've talked to or some of these, that is the thing. It seems like there's a big difference between them who's successful and the others who aren't. Just merely knowing the numbers and tracking the numbers in each campaign.
Bryan Bowman:
Yeah, because then it just turns into a simple yes or no like, "Is this profitable?" Yes or no. "Should I double down on this?" I mean, especially if you need to make a quick turn around on your ad spend, I mean, if you have to put a $100 in today and you need to make it back in 48 hours because capital is limited and you can't wait 30 days to see your return, it is critical that you know your numbers and you know what your yes and your no is and when you need to double down and when you just stop your ads.
Going back, I think because I leverage that, we had probably quicker success probably the most. I loved Amazon, it was awesome like we're doing really well really quickly but then my daddy used to always say, "No matter how thin the pancake there's always two sides."
That couldn't be any more true with Amazon, you can have this great thing going but then we got hit with, man, I don't even want to get into the whole story because it brings up too much pain but I do remember waking up, it was a Tuesday morning, I checked my seller app and I'm like, "Wait a second, this is already a slow morning.
I don't know about this." I went back to the desktop, checked and sure enough like our number one product had been blocked then our seller account was shut down. It took forever to get that back. It was just one thing after another and through all that pain, I really figured out, it became very apparent like I cannot depend on Amazon. I have to build my own sandbox.
Amazon can be a spoke in the wheel but it cannot be the entire wheel. That's when I really double down on the funnels, honestly that's when I was looking for the best way to build funnels, how do I start because I had used them before but never really to the extent that I'm using them now. I just wanted to build that off Amazon strategy because I already had the brands in place. I was like, "All right, I need to build my sandbox."
That's how I started using ClickFunnels and I guess it was at the time it felt like a curse but ended up being the biggest blessing for us because now we've been able to really diversify our sales and really develop a repeatable strategy.
It's good, it's all good, man. I'm excited. I think it's interesting how this happens where some of our most painful times end up being the things that give us the most power and give us the most ability to make a difference and make a change.
Steve Larsen:
You said something that I thought was really interesting. I mean, you're basically describing the equivalent of the Amazon slap, the Google slap.
Bryan Bowman:
Oh yeah, oh yeah.
Steve Larsen:
There's a lot of people who I've spoken as well, they say like, "Just leave it on Amazon. All you need is Amazon." I mean, you just said the exact opposite that you realized that you can't do that. What advantage did you gain by not just staying on Amazon, by actually going off of it?
Bryan Bowman:
Absolutely, there are a lot of advantages but there's one that's the one that you should, all your listeners and you and everyone should write down, it's two x versus eleven x. That's all you need to know. Your Amazon business, if you have a purely Amazon based business where all your revenue is coming from Amazon, you can expect on the market when you go to sell that business, about a two x return on earnings.
Steve Larsen:
Really?
Bryan Bowman:
Yeah. If you have a business off Amazon, Shopify, big commerce ClickFunnels which by the way those listening, you can run an entire eCommerce business on ClickFunnels. It's one of the biggest misconceptions that I find.
Steve Larsen:
It's so true, thank you for saying that.
Bryan Bowman:
People, they think for some reason I don't know why and this is one of the things that I make sure I always educate people on in my community inside of eCom Underground is like it's a shopping cart. You can put everything in there. You can run an entire eCommerce store there. I compare it to basically a Costco versus a personal shopper.
A Costco is like your Shopify store where you're walking around, you have a big shopping cart and you can throw a bunch of stuff from the rafters into your shopping cart and check out. That's a Costco. Whereas a funnel or ClickFunnels is it's like a personal shopper.
When you walk in, you go to Neiman Marcus and they're curating goods just for you and the goods that you're going to see are different than the ones that I'm going to see because we have a different build, we have a different taste, we have different age. You're a man, if I'm a woman, you're going to see different things. That's the experience of a funnel so that's why they convert so much better.
The two x is of your Amazon, eleven x, if you build that business on Shopify, if you build that business on ClickFunnels, BigCommerce, whatever, you can expect a ten to eleven x return on earnings when you go to sell that business. The market reflects the risk inherent in having a purely Amazon business.
Steve Larsen:
That's amazing, that's amazing. I never thought about that. I've got a buddy who just sold for a ton of money in the eCom space and I was like, "Man, that's remarkable at how big that thing scaled, how fast." It was exactly what you said, he wasn't just staying on Amazon itself.
I've heard from a lot of people, "Make sure you are in Amazon," but just like you're saying, you can't leave the whole cake on Amazon itself.
Bryan Bowman:
Absolutely. The best analogy guys is imagine you've been doing marathon. Have you been in marathon, Steve?
Steve Larsen:
I've been in a sprint triathlon.
Bryan Bowman:
All right, do you know when a marathon when you have all the people on the side and they've got the waters and like the herd. It's like this massive, all these people are running, right? They are just like, people are holding out cups and they are just grabbing cups and water splashing everywhere.
Steve Larsen:
Yeah.
Bryan Bowman:
That's what I compare Amazon to. We're the ones with our cups and we're charging for them and there's this like all these people coming and they're grabbing our cups and they're drinking them. It's like yes, I get rid of all my cups but they're gone, they are just running.
You don't even know who they were. Whoever was running the marathon, they've got the entry numbers, the emails, the phone numbers, they know everything but you're basically just hanging out on the side lines with your cup of water.
That's kind of what Amazon is like and you're just waiting for the next herd of traffic that's going to buy your stuff. That's cool.
Steve Larsen:
It's a really good analogy.
Bryan Bowman:
Yeah, that's what it feels like. Then you're just waiting, you're like, "All right, hopefully the next marathon comes." The marathon by the way is called Q4. As opposed to building a business, and this is what I always tell people, what is your business? When you really think about it, it's not your inventory, it's not your sales or your profit or revenue, it's your customers, your customer list.
That's why the market reflects that big difference in building that on Amazon versus off Amazon business so it's critical to have that ability to have that relationship with your customers.
That's probably above anything, that is the biggest reason why you'd want to build something off of that marathon platform.
Steve Larsen:
Sure, and what's funny too is like anyway, I love the analogy that the customer is the business. Amazon takes all that, it take all that data. You can't really get that data, can you? You're just selling stuff.
Bryan Bowman:
Exactly. I mean, and they understand it. They understand the power in the customer that's why they keep it and in fact, they have a lot of things in place to keep you from driving traffic off the platform.
They make their terms of service very open-ended so that they can really suspend you for any reason. It's kind of one of the dirty secrets like no one really knows that. It's interesting, when you first start selling on Amazon it's like it's so exciting because a lot of people like me were just like, "Hey, I need to build a business, an income that replaces my day job."
Every advanced Amazon seller you talk to will tell you the same thing. It's always this worry in the back of their mind. Again, fortunately, this is a mindset thing is to really, really see the blessing in the pain sometimes.
Fortunately, I went through some of these pain early on which forced me to have to become something else and have to learn something else which is again turned into the biggest blessing for us.
Steve Larsen:
I mean, someone once told me that for every dollar spent online, Amazon is so big that a quarter of that dollar is going to Amazon right now.
Bryan Bowman:
Yeah, that's crazy. One out of four dollars spent online is spent through Amazon or one of their companies.
Steve Larsen:
That is huge, absolutely massive.
Bryan Bowman:
If you really think about that.
Steve Larsen:
I know, you think about how much money that really is it's like oh my gosh, that's amazing but you're saying, obviously put some stuff on there just to be present but then keep the bulk of the business offline. How are you actually building it offline? I mean, not offline but off of Amazon.
Bryan Bowman:
Yeah, exactly. This takes me to my next point which I touched on earlier. Stephen, this is all the stuff I really I just I talk about all the time inside of eCom Underground because I just really want to open people's eyes to something else, like a different opportunity, different possibility.
The first thing you have to do, it's nice that someone says, "Great, build off Amazon, you can do better," but how, right? The first thing is it's a mindset shift in how you're going to build your business.
If you're looking to just sell general store type stuff or you just want to sell one off products that are hot sellers, maybe Amazon is a good fit or maybe some free plus shipping funnel, that's fine but long-term, we need to really build an asset.
The way I like to think of it is shifting from commodity to community. This is something I repeat over and over and over again because as long as you're selling a widget and all widgets are the same, and the person who comes to your store sees it as another widget, you're competing on price. That's all you're competing on.
Steve Larsen:
Which is awful.
Bryan Bowman:
It's awful. It's awful. The life cycle of your product is shorter and it's not going to last as long before someone's going to undercut you. I mean, there's plenty of people that are doing this, they're literally making pennies on the dollar like a profit and they're just trying to do the volume play.
I hope you consider this. Imagine you've built up a community instead, people who've rallied behind an interest or a common shared like passion or even an expert or a personality so it take for example, I was talking to my sister about this. One product that you would never want to sell right now by the way, if you're going to go on Amazon, it's completely saturated, measuring cups, kitchen utensil like measuring cups, you would never sell that.
Maybe if you did, I don't know, maybe you could, I wouldn't. Margins aren't big enough and it's too competitive. It would make no sense. Then I was talking to my sister, she loves to cook.
She's passionate about cooking and she follows this, oh what's her name?
Cupcake Jemma, okay. She follows her and she loves Cupcake Jemma and she loves the content Cupcake Jenna puts out and follows all her videos and all these stuff.
I asked her, I said, "If Cupcake Jemma came out with measuring cups that were twice the price of whatever you could find on Amazon, and the lowest price that you could find out there, would you buy the ones from Cupcake Jenna or would you price shop so you can get cheaper ones?" She's like, "No, I'll just buy hers." Why? "Because I know that's what she uses or I know it's her. It's her."
She's getting to experience something of that community, of that interest, of that passion, right? When we start building communities and it doesn't necessarily have to have an expert at the front end. I like if it does because there's an attractive character that we can follow but if we can just build a community first, I learned this from Todd Brown, then the sale becomes superfluous because the messaging and the marketing is so good and people are craving to be a part of something.
I don't know how else to explain it. If you start with the community then you can start introducing the physical products because people will actually start asking you for it. When we start building our communities and there's a lot of different ways you can build them. You can use Facebook pages, Facebook groups.
There's a lot of different ways you can do it but the point is people will start asking you. You could do it on YouTube, they'll start looking at the videos and they'll be like, "What's that shirt you're wearing? What's that thing you're using?" They already want to know.
Before we ever start pitching any physical products, people will start asking us for them like, "Oh, it would be cool if," let's say you're in the running niche, "If you could come up with a patch," like I love running, running addict, or whatever it is, they'll start asking you first which is awesome. That's like a very good thing.
Steve Larsen:
Crazy.
Bryan Bowman:
You start with the physical product but this is where I'm going to challenge you, probably not you but your listeners is to go a step further. Who says we only have to sell physical products? Let's get into the information space also. We can sell training.
There's a lot of information that we can still be a part of and even if we're not selling it, we can form affiliate agreements with people where we can present relevant products and this is how we build our funnels relevant products that are information based because we need those higher margins to sustain the business.
One of the dirty secrets about eCommerce is you only really get paid when your business is flat.
When the business is growing, growing, growing, you're operating in let's say 30% margins, you're going to pay for the inventory because there's cost of goods, you're going to pay for the inventory shipping fulfillment, all that stuff. If you made a 100,000 this month, you want to make 200,000 next month.
Steve Larsen:
Don't grow.
Bryan Bowman:
You got to roll that money back in so you can pay for all that inventory and everything else associated with it. That's how you end up making five million dollars a year in eCommerce and you'll pay yourself 200 grand because you can't pay yourself very much but as soon as the business goes flat and you stop growing, then there's cash you can pull out.
One of the things is if you can start adding information, and the third piece if you can add software which is awesome because you can have this trifecta inside of your community, now you can really start getting cash into the coffers and really start getting more cash flow coming in and let the eCommerce side build on its own and double down on that.
Steve Larsen:
That's awesome. I think it's really cool. I run the Two Comma Club Coaching Program right now and it's been a lot of fun but that's been one of the big questions, so I'm going to read the book Experts Secrets from Russell Brunson. Say like, "Hey, this is just for webinars." You're like, "No, no, no."
Bryan Bowman:
No way.
Steve Larsen:
No, it's not. If you look at it carefully, he's just using a webinar as an example of how to actually use the Expert Secret process but if you're to take an eCom product and combine it with info or combine it with something else or software or whatever it is, that's one of the easiest ways to create a blue ocean for yourself because no one else is thinking about that combination or taking information and then ... Actually with the Experts Secrets funnel itself, the actual book funnel, we do this all the time.
We will combine just like you're saying, "Hey, here's this cool eCom thing, this cool products that's physical," but then really the revenue accelerators are all info products in the backend as the upsells. Anyway, just 100% I'm screaming over here that what you're saying I totally attest to.
We've seen it so many times if you can combine them together whatever, that is huge, huge power, massive power for revenue.
Bryan Bowman:
The biggest thing and we could talk about this, I mean, I don't know if you like to get into it kind of the actual strategy we use with traffic and then getting that traffic to convert but the biggest thing is building that connection, the community.
You have to have this...
One thing I do and I run four different brands and in every single brand I have an org chart. Those of you who are listening, if you have not read E-Myth Revisited like, don't pause the podcast, finish the episode and then go to Amazon or wherever and go buy yourself that book.
Steve Larsen:
Yeah, great book.
Bryan Bowman:
You should have an org chart, think of your business as I don't care if you're a solo operation and I do this for all my businesses even if it's just me, I have no staff, no VA, no one at all, it's just me, and I am solo operation in that brand. Build an org chart as if you are going to build a McDonald's and you're going to franchise this business.
You want it to be a well-oiled machine that the 5,000 version of your business will be just as profitable as the first that you founded. Build that org chart and make sure that in that org chart there's somebody who's in charge of relationship management like really managing relationships with your customers because at the end of the day ... Have a statement.
Another thing I do is there's a contract for each one of those roles and every single one of those positions has to fulfill the promise to serve and to reinforce the values of the community more than selling like ever. It has nothing to do with selling. That's why I always say, "It's all enveloped in community." Make sure that you are reinforcing the values of the community and why they are there because that is your asset.
Long-term it's that community because they're going to tell you what they want and they're going to start asking for it...
They are going to start asking for that physical product that they're going to rest on their desk, that info product that they're going to, after they're done using your physical product they are going to log on and use your info product and then the software, if there's a need for it.
Not every niche has it. It's funny, Russell, I'm a part of inner circle, it's just amazing to be coached and mentored by Russell. He talked a lot about how satisfying the itch in the funnel, like there's initial itch and then once that itch is scratched, there's another.
I started using the phrase that different niches have different itches and it's like some niches have more itches than others, right? Some can't support a software let's say but you'd be surprised, if you think creatively, a lot of different interest can but anyway I'm geeking out a little bit. The big thing is remember why you're doing it, it's the community, it's not the product.
If you're thinking product, product, product, you're selling a commodity. I don't care what you're selling, the info product, the physical product, whatever. If you're thinking about the product, it's just a commodity and someone else is going to beat your own price eventually.
Steve Larsen:
Oh man, I totally love that. The power of the community too is so huge because I mean, just like you said, they will start to tell you what is it that they want which takes a lot of the guesswork out for you.
Basically, it's this huge platform for you to start crushing false beliefs and it's a little group for you to launch when you actually do create the products that they're asking you for.
I don't know, it solves so many problems for you to have the community, have this following, a group of people it's like I'm totally in love with what you're doing.
Bryan Bowman:
Exactly.
Steve Larsen:
I love that you brought that up, it's part of the eCom selling because most people don't think of that for eCom. Most people since it's a physical product, I mean, it doesn't take that much copy usually to sell something physical. You don't really see massive sales letters on Amazon pages. The value is on the tangible thing I'm going to get to hold and touch. I'm being future paced alone. Usually, you can charge a little bit more easier than info products out of the gate because I'm going to get to hold it and it's real.
Bryan Bowman:
The only eCommerce people that are thinking about this are those that are in eCom Underground.
Steve Larsen:
Yeah, no, I totally believe that.
Bryan Bowman:
No, honestly. I know sometimes I sound like a broken record to the community. I'm always talking about this. It's so important like this is the one piece is this community piece but anyway, I love it. It's fun stuff, man.
Steve Larsen:
That's awesome. As far as how to sell an eCom product, you said the funnel, don't just be on Amazon, build a community, combine it with info product or software, how do you find the product? It's like we have these models in our head and we understand part of the marketing pieces like, "Oh, yeah, I can totally do that. I can do that." What? Do I do it too? What's the actual ... Find those things.
Bryan Bowman:
Absolutely. Absolutely. Again, I'm going to assume. It's so funny because I always talk about there's principles, there's strategies and there's tactics and the tactics what usually ends up happening is people don't usually share the tactics or talk about the tactics.
They'll talk about the principles which is like find your Y, find the core interest, the strategy is how you're going to implement high level but then the tactics really people don't talk about much. We're covering all these which is actually pretty cool. The principles guys is what is the interest and I would always have you start there.
I would have you not start at the product...
I think that's an old mindset and if you start at the product, I think it's not that it can't be done and I'll share a way where you can do it that way but I would highly encourage you to start all the way at the beginning at the principle like what is it that you're trying to build, what is it that you're trying to create, who are the people you're trying to gather or congregate and the products will emerge out of that, I guarantee you.
They do every single time. That's literally how we build brands. Now, we start first with the interest. We start first with the passion and the products will emerge.
If you want to go straight to product, we're going to come full circle and go back to Amazon. Amazon has more data than you could ever go out and pay for with software or anything else. There's some really cool stuff you can do. If you go into, I mean, I'll just tip right here, guys, this is how we do product research.
Even if we're in a niche already and we want to look for extra products, and this is assuming you don't have a list, if you already have a list then do an ask campaign. Ask your people like what do you want basically.
Steve Larsen:
Yes, I love you're bringing that up. Okay, nevermind.
Bryan Bowman:
Let's say we're starting with nothing. What's that?
Steve Larsen:
I said I'm geeking out with you.
Bryan Bowman:
Let's say we're starting with nothing. Amazon has these really cool things called Amazon best sellers. They are the hot list, the most wished for list. When you go into Amazon and they'll tell you what are people wishing for, what are they putting on their wishlist like what are things that they want, what are the things that are the hottest sellers overall in Amazon or by individual category. If you want to sell stuff in the sports and outdoor niche, Amazon will tell you these are the hot top hundred selling items in the sports and outdoor niche.
It just gives you the data. That by far is the best place to start, to start brainstorming ideas.
There's apps you can buy that are plug ins, none of them are really I mean, they're not super accurate in the sense that like this one says this sells 10,000 and this one sells 20,000. It's just a gauge to help you understand maybe approximate sales so you understand what's a hot selling product and where maybe there's some opportunity.
Amazon is a place to start. If you want to look for purely product research, I would encourage all your listeners to start checking out some of those lists in Amazon. Again, guys, I would highly encourage you if you want to build a long-term asset, start with the principle of the actual interest.
Steve Larsen:
Could you give an example of that?
Bryan Bowman:
What's that?
Steve Larsen:
Could you give an example of that? Just for someone listening that goes, "What do you mean by principle?"
Bryan Bowman:
Yeah, if we decide like we want to get, okay, I'm just looking right here, I've got my cup of coffee right here. We'll go with coffee. If I'm like, "All right, I want to start selling eCommerce." Let's say I'm starting from day one, "Man, I really want to start selling some physical products."
Then maybe you're going to go into Amazon and you're going to start looking for hot selling products in the coffee niche. There's a lot of them. I mean, coffee niche is such a good niche. I'll explain why it is in a second. There's tons of amazing products you can sell and probably can make some money on. You can get source pretty easily.
You can find a manufacturer in China or maybe even domestically, but we tend to go overseas and get it sent, get your samples and start producing. That's one approach.
You go to Amazon, you're going to be able to find some hot selling products but what I'm going to encourage your listeners to do and I hope you consider is let's go back before we even consider do I want to sell the coffee mug, do I want to sell the grinder, do I want to sell the pour over top, or whatever.
Let's go back and let's talk about the niche, the interest coffee aficionados, coffee lovers, people who really like why do they love coffee so much and start building that community.
Start thinking in terms of even if you're not going to build a community page or anything like that but start thinking about the interest, the principles. Why do they love coffee?
What does it mean to them? Because what's that going to influence it's like top down, it's going to influence everything else. It's going to influence all the way down to your Facebook ads.
If you're just like, the worst thing you can do if you're going to run a Facebook ad, we can talk about this is say, "Get my coffee," let's just say coffee mug, coffee mug 50% off today only like I guarantee you no one is going to buy that. No one is going to click on that and buy it because all you're trying to do is scream louder than everybody else, every other advertiser.
If you can pull your customer out of the crowd.
I always use a Waldo example like where's Waldo where there's like all the people and then Waldo is in there and if like a magnet, if I can pull Waldo out of that sea of people then I don't need to yell anymore. I can just have a conversation. If I start with the principle which is why do people love coffee so much, that's going to affect my messaging, right?
That's going to affect how I connect and for some people, they choose a certain coffee because they want it to be free from toxins, and they want it to be organic and they want it to be the cleanest cup of coffee. For others, it's like a super power where it's productive, it's the first thing they have that inspires them.
No caffeine, no creativity then that's how I'm going to connect with them. At the end, I'm still selling the same product, the pour over top thing but it's because I took the time to get my principles right, then the strategy I used for my Facebook ad was influenced and then tactically how I implemented it in my funnel was influenced as well.
I don't know if that make sense...
Steve Larsen:
No, it totally does. Rather than selling, I mean you're basically selling the benefit rather than the feature which is awesome.
Bryan Bowman:
Yeah, I mean there, you put it, see you're so much smarter than me, Steve.
Steve Larsen:
Whatever.
Bryan Bowman:
You put it so much more elegantly.
Steve Larsen:
I stole that from so many marketers. That's cool though, okay. Meaning, I've always thought of that in terms of how to sell it but you're taking that principle like way farther back into the actual product selection phase which is very interesting.
Bryan Bowman:
You know why though, man? This is my prediction, and not that this is ... I'm no Nostradamus so marketing, I know the guy who is though, but what's really going to start separating people is like being genuine, man and you can't fake it. That's the thing. I actually, I try to get into niches.
I don't sell me-too products. I try to get in niches that I'm going to take a little bit of time to really understand the niche. Typically, it's going to be something I'm interested in but even if I'm not and I see a great opportunity in the market, I'm going to get to know these people.
I really, really, really want to be genuine and serve and create a sense of community. It just makes everything so much easier. I can't emphasize it enough because you're going to be able to think their thoughts. You're going to be able to get into their head. It makes product selection and copy and offers and everything so much easier.
Steve Larsen:
Yeah, yeah, no, definitely with that kind of backdrop. You go in there and you start looking at Amazon best sellers and you're going to figure out how you can sell the result rather than the thing.
How do you start testing? What is it that you're doing to go through you know, "Is this product actually good? Should I build a whole culture and community around this?" You know what I mean? What's the next step after that?
Bryan Bowman:
I mean, the first thing I mean I'll be honest, it's been tested enough where our method once I check some boxes in terms of knowing that there's enough interest in the niche, doing a little bit of preliminary product research, seeing that there's some products that people buy, again, going to Amazon, seeing what kind of stuff they buy, researching the niche a little bit, seeing the competitiveness of it. I'll double down and just start building up our communities but I think initially whenever you're going to sell any physical products, always use small test orders.
More and more, because there's been so many more of these private label sellers or people starting their own brands and going to manufacturers in China.
If you're using Alibaba or AliExpress or whatever you're using or global sources, there's just a lot of different ways you can go to get product more and more these manufacturers are accepting lower MOQs or lower order quantity. When I started, if you're not ordering a thousand units like good luck because you're going to pay, either you're not going to find any manufacturer to sell you anything or you're going to pay a lot of money.
Now, it's not uncommon. I mean, if you just push back a little bit or just make a second or third request, it's not uncommon to be able to get 100 or 200 units, 300 units max, I guess not max but max for a minimum order like a small order and you start with something small.
I mean, always order samples. I don't want to get too much into sourcing but always check a few samples on physical products because the picture they show you is never the same as what they actually send you. I mean, what they send you is never the same as the order so it's the bigger order. Order one, the 300 units and start selling those.
You could put them, I like putting them on Amazon but you can create some simple funnels and see if the inventory moves. If you're able to actually get the product to sell, if it does, then you know you're ready to double down and order a bigger quantity.
Anyway, I don't want to get too much into the inspection stuff and all that.
Steve Larsen:
Sure. Think about more the ecomunderground.com for sure.
Bryan Bowman:
Yeah, this is definitely all we talk about is all the nitty-gritty, the details, but I think the main take away is always start small and scale up because I've made that mistake.
The first product that we ever launched, I mean, I didn't have a lot of disposable income and we put ten grand into it. I learned the hard way because I sold $500 worth of product.
Steve Larsen:
This is going to sound like crazy.
Bryan Bowman:
In fact, I still think I have some of those boxes of products sitting around in a storage unit somewhere. The biggest thing I can tell you like anything else is micro budgets, micro orders essentially and just scale up and test it first.
Fortunately, ClickFunnels has made it super easy to be able to test product like using funnel.
Steve Larsen:
I was going to say, you go get the product, you find it on Amazon. First of all, what people are wanting, the interest, the principles. You go and you source the product to get small micro shipments of it and then you're testing the sale on
Amazon plus like funnel, is that how you're doing it?
Bryan Bowman:
Yeah, I mean I would pick one or the other honestly guys because I definitely don't want to divert.
I'm a big believer like you focus your attention on one platform so the reason I like to test on Amazon, the only reason I like to is it's just quick. It's very quick to verify but I think that you also, if you're not really interested in getting into the whole Amazon world which you don't have to, the newest brand we're launching we're not even going to sell on Amazon.
It's just not an interest of ours...
We're doing it surely off of the marketplaces. When I say Amazon, I mean Walmart, Jet, Newegg, all of the marketplaces. You can build out simple funnels just to test to see if people are ordering and build out Facebook ads the way that we've talked about. Maybe we didn't talk about so much but the main thing with the Facebook ad is, actually this is really good, I really want to share this.
Steve Larsen:
Yeah, let's hear.
Bryan Bowman:
When you're building out your Facebook ads, there are so many ways to drive traffic, guys. I know people who are purely on Pinterest, that's how they get all their traffic. I know people who are purely on AdWords, that's how they get all their traffic.
We use a combination of AdWords and Facebook. We're starting to branch out into Pinterest for one of our brands that's more in the mommy niche. Facebook is still I believe the most powerful platform but because of the increased competition, you've just have to step your game up and the biggest mistake I see people make, I kind of talked about it already with especially in eCommerce, with the streaming louder than your competition with bigger discounts and bolder funds, red borders or whatever is that streaming louder doesn't work.
You have to get connection. It's really interesting because if you're selling a high ticket coaching program, let's say you're selling a $10,000 high ticket coaching program, you would never get on a Facebook ad and be like have a video or have an image that says, "Get my high ticket coaching for 50% off, it was 20,000, now 10 and I'm an amazing coach. You should totally come work with me, you will get amazing results." No one would ever start their campaign that way. It's like a coaching program, right?
Steve Larsen:
If they do, it's really annoying.
Bryan Bowman:
Yeah, if they do, it's really annoying and if you see those ads, just make them a spam or just report them because they don't work. Yet that's what most eCommerce sellers do, right? We're like, "Buy now. Buy now. Buy now. Buy now. Buy now, 90% off, 95% off, I'll give you $5 if you buy it." It's like let's just push the offer. What would you do if you're a high ticket coach?
What would your ad look like if you're trying to sell a $10,000 coaching program, Steve? Your initial ad to cold traffic, what would you ...
Steve Larsen:
If I was selling a high ticket coaching program from cold traffic, actually I wouldn't. I would sell to my own community. The first thing I would do is I would be out showing people benefits of using a funnel and first, defining the people who probably know what that vernacular is. Then, ascending then up slowly just like you and I were talking about before because I wouldn't walk up on the street and ask someone for ten grand. To me, that's what cold traffic is. I'm not that good at cold traffic and it's for a reason.
I just feel like it's the harder method than going to warm traffic and hot so I don't do cold that much.
Bryan Bowman:
Like you said, first thing you do is you'd start serving and you just start probably connecting with them. It's a little bit easier with low ticket. It probably wasn't the best analogy because yeah, absolutely, good luck selling $10,000 program to cold traffic but let's say it's a $30 offer. Let's say it's a $10 offer, I don't care what it is. There is an independence and an interdependence between your ads and your landing page.
There's an independence because you're not trying to sell with the ad. All you're trying to do is get people to click to find out more. It's like a headline, the headline has one purpose, right? To get people to read the next line.
Steve Larsen:
Right.
Bryan Bowman:
The headline is not there to sell them necessarily but your ad is definitely not there to sell them, it's to get them to just click to get to the landing page, however, there's an interdependence between the ad and the landing page because that pre-frames them and sets the stage for whether or not they're going to accept your message on that landing page.
Not all clicks are created equally. When I understood this, this was like the biggest breakthrough for me and my ads was there's this independence but this interdependence and when in my ad I just want them to click so that's where I'm going to try to build that connection, that's where I use a lot of story, I use a lot of powerful imagery.
Who is it? Oren Klaff in Pitch Anything, he talks about the three different parts of the brain.
Steve Larsen:
It's such a good book.
Bryan Bowman:
It's awesome. I could just ramble off books right now, they're so good.
Steve Larsen:
Me too, so good though.
Bryan Bowman:
Basically, the part of the brain that's responsible for making decisions is actually has nothing to do with the logical like fact-based like what percentage off am I getting, it's the emotional part of the brain. It's the part of the brain that's responsible for processing emotions.
We want to connect and we want to feel what they're feeling and let them know that our product, we're not trying to create emotions.
This is Eugene Schwartz, Breakthrough Advertising, the job of your advertisement is not to create the emotion, it's to take their existing hopes, dreams, desires and put them onto your product and project them onto your product. We do that by connecting with the ad, we need to have more of a connection. It's a little bit hard.
I know this all sounds very theoretical but-
Steve Larsen:
It's so true, though.
Bryan Bowman:
It's not that difficult if you actually care and you actually take the time to think about what pains, what fears, what hopes, what dreams your prospect has. The only job of the ad and it's not overly like sentimental or anything, we're not trying to be corny either.
It's just enough to make people stop and go, "Okay, maybe I am interested in this pour over coffee top thing, maybe this really will make special cup of coffee, maybe it will make something that is worth tasting. Let me go ahead and click and find out."
Steve Larsen:
Right, it's powerful because like you said, you're not trying to create desire inside of a person or any kind of emotion or whatever. If they already have it, the only job I feel like of the sale and marketing is to just plug into exactly what you just said. I forgot it's Eugene Schwartz that said that. That's cool, that's really cool.
With the ad, you're going in, you're saying, independence and interdependence in the ad but then also the way they flow together. I'm not trying to sell on the ad, I'm just trying to tap into current emotion and then the next page that has one role, the next page one role, I love that. Everything on every single piece of creative.
Bryan Bowman:
Exactly.
Steve Larsen:
Do you mind just real quick, I know we've been going for a little while here, but do you mind just real quick just sharing a little bit of one of the standard eCom funnel models is and maybe we'll wrap up with that?
Bryan Bowman:
Yeah, for sure. We still use free plus shipping a lot. I still love free plus shipping. Again, when people say, I see this all the time, you know free plus shipping, everyone is doing it, it doesn't work.
Yeah, if you're leading with on your ad, get our widget for $7 or get it for free, get it for free, click here, click here, click here. Again, it's a commodity, people just don't respond as well to that ad. Last year they did, but they just don't respond as well anymore.
I still like though a low ticket tripwire, whatever you want to call it, to get them in and qualify my buyer and qualify, qualify a subscriber and qualify a buyer at the same and obviously getting that credit card info on the front end allows us to do one click upsells.
The biggest thing I would give for eCommerce folks and maybe you've heard this, maybe you haven't is multiple quantities, multiple quantities. I want you to test being a little over the top.
In the sense like if you think nobody would ever want five-
Steve Larsen:
Coffeemakers.
Bryan Bowman:
Coffeemakers, exactly...
You don't know how many people they have in their family, who they're going to gift these things to, you have to try it and you'd be surprised how often people will take the multiple quantity option.
Again, ClickFunnels is why love it, it makes it super easy for me to not only add multiple quantities but with a few lines of custom code, a few easy lines, have some nice call outs, bold some things, really call out my best value to try to entice people to consider the higher quantities.
On the upsell pages, I used to do more of the same thing, we're finding that doesn't convert as well so I am starting to switch to different complimentary products but again, in multiple quantities. Then, on my down sale we'll usually strip out the most popular item so let's say it's a supplement product.
We lead with our free plus shipping or maybe our trial, then on the upsell with multiple quantities, on the upsell we might have a pack of different products that are likely to be purchased together like a bundle, stack or whatever of supplements.
If they say no on the down sale, we would strip out the most popular product that we know people is our best seller or is a popular product of ours. We would strip it out of that stack. That's one example.
Then just make sure you take advantage of those thank you pages. That's another common thing I see with funnels in general but definitely eCommerce funnels more than anything is no one is taking advantage like few people take advantage of that thank you page. That's a great place, again, learn from Amazon, frequently bought together, frequently viewed. Think of yourself as a massive ...
Steve Larsen:
This too.
Bryan Bowman:
What's that?
Steve Larsen:
Other customers bought this too.
Bryan Bowman:
Exactly...
Customers who bought this bought this as well. Hack Amazon, I mean, if you're an eCommerce seller, hack Amazon but like look at every element on that page and see how you can incorporate some of that stuff. That's probably one of the best takeaways I can give is that thank you page, it's underutilized and start funnel stacking.
Honestly, you'd be surprised how many times people will go through this free plus shipping offers when you start stacking them.
Steve Larsen:
It's so true. I don't know how many times I bought [Trayvon 00:56:41] gun oil thing, oh I have a few guns.
Bryan Bowman:
What's that?
Steve Larsen:
I said, it's so true, I don't know how many times I bought [Trayvon 00:56:47] gun oil thing. I only have a few guns but man, I bought so many of those things. It's so funny.
That's hilarious...
Man, I want to thank you for this. Just to recap everything, I always take a massive full page of notes every time I get to talk to a genius like you so I got it here again. You talked a lot about how not to choose eCom or info or just one thing, you actually can combine them and make even more powerful offer. I love the concept of how getting off of Amazon allows you to sell for 11 x potential on the backend.
The dirty little secret is you get paid if it's flat. I love that. It's hilarious, man.
Then, massive focus on community, otherwise you're just a commodity. You can still sell the commodity but there's no longevity in just selling commodity. You got to be able to sell to community too and get people into there. I love that. Itches are in the niches, love that too.
Then a big focus on principles, what are the interest, what is it they're actually going after, actually fulfilling that and tapping into creative or tapping into the desires that they already have. I love the concept of independence and interdependence with the ads too and pre-frame bridges and all that before the funnel hits and then going to the funnel.
Man, you dumped a ton of stuff on here. This is amazing. This is like just a little flavor of what you actually offer in eCom Underground, that's so cool. I really appreciate it.
Bryan Bowman:
I was excited to come on, man, when you invited me. I was very excited. We've become really great friends man and I appreciate you, I appreciate what you're doing.
Anything I can do to help serve your audience and hopefully give back some value that they can implement, some strategy but also some very tactical things that if they're running funnels right now, hopefully they can go tweak and start testing.
Steve Larsen:
I appreciate that. You guys noticed, those of you guys that are listening now, how much did he actually just spend on the funnel itself like the pages, not that much time. I think it's a big place that people fumble up and they say, "I've got to spend all this time," now, the funnel matters but so much goes in to actually finding the product.
Finding the needs, fulfilling and actually building the business around the funnel so it can be self-sustained, I love that. Anyway, thanks so much for all you shared and I really, really appreciate it. Hey, where can people go to I think you've mentioned the trial they can get?
Bryan Bowman:
Yeah, I want to do something special for your audience just to have them experience a little bit of eCom Underground and be able to connect with them a little bit more.
I recently created a group. We have a large private Facebook group like most ClickFunnels official, it's private but it's available for free to the public. That's an amazing group that's growing very, very quickly but we recently started a separate group which is our insiders group.
Our eCom Underground Insiders...
This is really special for me because it's a little smaller group and allows me to just serve them a little more closely and spend a little more time with them.
What I do in that group is I have a weekly live Q&A where we literally breakout the whiteboard and your exact questions get answered and you come on and as a group we can answer them but what I do is anything that I can do to help to answer these questions I do.
If you submit the questions in advance, if there's someone in my network who's a better expert than I am then I try to get them on that call and we try to make sure you get your questions answered every week on those live Q&As. What I also do is I have an expert, I call it expert no pitch interview where literally you know that moment, Stephen, it's one of my favorite things ever, it's like after you finished dinner, the plates have been cleared, dessert is gone, we're just sipping coffee or whatever it is and we're just sitting there talking.
We're all just really calm and just sharing stories. That's the environment in the interviews, we're literally it's just an open dialog, somebody who's just amazing in what they do, most of the time eCommerce related, and we can just pick their brain and get our questions answered from an expert.
We do that every month and we have a special private group just for us for the insider so it's a really special community. What I want to do is just extend a 30 day all access trial for all of your listeners, they can come check it out, see if it's for them and I'd love to have them obviously. It just reminds me of a sales page, like what's the catch, there's no catch.
It's part of a huge national promotion. What I want honestly is like have your audience experience it, if they get value then of course I would love to have them stay and to be a part of the community long-term.
What they can do is if you'd like to be a part of it and experience it, they can go to eCom, it's with one M, ecomunderground.com/steve S-T-E-V-E and yeah, we'd love to have you and have you try it out and see if it's a good fit for you.
Steve Larsen:
That's awesome, man. I appreciate it. Hey, if everything else is good, reach out to Bryan to say thank you so much. Bryan, I appreciate it, a personal friend and total eCom junkie and nerd.
Bryan Bowman:
Yeah, for sure.
Steve Larsen:
There's a lot of eCom people that listen to this podcast, so I know they're all going to really love it. Anyway, thanks so much, man. I really appreciate this.
Bryan Bowman:
Awesome. Thank you so much and yeah, it was awesome.
Steve Larsen:
All right, bye-bye.
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In this 2nd episode of our 6-part series, Yanni shows the funnel behind his painting business...
Steve Larsen:
What's going on, everyone? This is Steve Larsen, and you're listening to Sales Funnel Radio. Now, this is part two of our six-part series. This episode, I'm going to dive deep into the professional services category. This is one of the six categories that we know people are using ClickFunnels for especially, and so, number two here is professional services.
Now, if you are a dentist, a lawyer, a doctor, a chiropractor, a painter, anything where there's a trade involved. Whether or not you had to go to school, there's high skill involved with the actual service of the product. You're going to love this episode.
What I did is I've interviewed ... His name is Yanni Fikaris. You'll hear the numbers as he talks about it, but he's pulled 160 grand with $900 in ads--it's ridiculous!--in only three months. He's only had a ClickFunnels account since March, which is ridiculous.
Anyway, without further ado, let's dive into the episode...
Announcer:
Welcome to Sales Funnel Radio, where you'll learn marketing strategies to grow your online business, using today's best Internet sales funnels. Now, here's your host, Steve Larsen.
Steve Larsen:
Dentists, lawyers, doctors, chiropractors, painters, anyone with a trade is going to love the episode that we've got for you today. This is honestly a category that's the holy grail of anyone I know who's a funnel builder. They're trying to go after people who've learned a trade, somebody who is trying to sell a specific service, someone who's trying to sell a specific skill, and it's not an easy area.
Two days ago, I see a post by our speaker today, our guest today, basically saying, "Hey, look! I'm spending just a few dollars in leads, and I'm making a ton of money every month," and it's inside of what I call, what Russell calls, and what ClickFunnels calls the professional services category.
I thought, hey, I've got to get him on the show, and I'm excited to have him. Hey, everyone, if you could welcome with me, Mr. Yanni Fikaris. How you doing, man?
Yanni Fikaris:
I'm doing great, man, how are you?
Steve Larsen:
Dude, I'm just doing awesome. I was super excited for today. I had a hard time sleeping last night, because most people don't figure out what you have figured out, and I don't know that you've realized that yet, as I've talked to you, either.
Yanni Fikaris:
It's a short time coming, but it's a lot of bumps.
Steve Larsen:
Sure, sure, absolutely. Do you mind? Just tell us a little bit about yourself, and then I'd love to hear about what you've pulled off, because it's pretty unique, man.
Yanni Fikaris:
Yeah, I have a painting and refinishing company. It's been in the family. It's changed a little bit from when my dad and my uncle ran it, but we're a house painter, and we do specialty finishing, a lot of cabinet refinishing.
My specialty is spraying, so I really can bring down the crew size and give a really good product because of our spray application. It's harder to do, but it's a niche, and that niche is what promotes me on Facebook, in the advertising. It's that specific niche. I coupled that with what I've been reading from Russell.
What he's putting out there is these blue, the blue waters, and I was like, "You know what? This is pretty interesting." I mean, I'm not the sharpest guy, but I was like, "I've got to give this a shot."
Steve Larsen:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, no. It's funny. I've visited your site. Obviously, I've looked at your stuff, and you don't look like ... I mean, you don't necessarily look so much like a house painter. I mean, it looked like I was entering some kind of cult world. I mean, it was awesome. You have such awesome branding, such awesome sites, everything else.
What eventually led you to get into the Internet space as a painter?
Yanni Fikaris:
Well, we were spending a fortune in print, and one day I'm going to the mailbox, and I'm taking all this print, all this advertising from all these people, and I'm just throwing it in the trash every day. Then, I eventually put my recycling bin next to the mailbox, because I would just take out print, take out the bills, and throw everything into the recycling bin.
Steve Larsen:
I think we all do that, yeah.
Yanni Fikaris:
Yeah, I think, ultimately you either bring it in the house and put it in the recycling or take it outside. One day I'm thinking, man, we're spending 10 to 20 thousand dollars a month in advertising, and my newspaper and my print people are telling me, "Oh, if you get 1/1000 of a reader, it's good. It will pay for the ad." That's what they always say, "It's going to pay for the ad."
I'm thinking, man, if I spend 20 grand and I make 20 grand, I didn't even have to do any ... It wasn't even worth it, so an old friend of mine that I knew through real estate was friends with Russell. I was watching The Profit, and I watched Russell help one of these guys in a funnel. You see, I empathize with the small business, as opposed to people who are just selling other guru, how to advertise on Facebook. You need to know the business. You need to know what it's like to sit at home and worry.
Our family's owned small businesses before. We've had restaurants. We've had takeout places. This isn't my first one. It's not going to be my last. I can sit in your shoes and work on your problem. You put me in any ... That's why I like The Profit. I can do that. I'm a systems guy. I can figure out where you're weak and where you're strong and make anything efficient.
I put two and two together. I found ClickFunnels. I did the demo, and I was like, you know what? I think I can do this. I really wasn't a big Facebook guy at all. I really just started doing Facebook in November of last year. It hasn't even been a year. It was pretty user friendly. My first funnel was horrible, but, like you guys say, it's really just about how it works.
It doesn't have to look pretty...
Pretty can come later, if it really needs to be. I went from spending a fortune to really bringing my ad cost down.
Right away, it didn't work, but my ad cost was still a lot less, so I was spending a minuscule amount and getting deals, and people were starting to see it. Then, you see when the user rate starts, or the views start to actually increase. People start to share it, and people start to know your brand. It started to click, and I got that aha moment. I was like, dude, this is good.
Steve Larsen:
I went nuts when I saw your post. I was like, holy crap! Who is this guy? This is awesome. Holy crap. I started just scrolling, everyone just going nuts about it, everyone else tagging everyone else in it. I was like, this is amazing. This is absolutely ... It's so unique what you've done. I have really two areas I just wanted to dive into.
Number one question: First of all, you're selling your main service outright, right? I mean, that's the main thing of the funnel selling, right? You're not doing like a lead in. You know what I mean?
Yanni Fikaris:
Yeah. I go direct to what I do best.
Steve Larsen:
That's awesome.
Yanni Fikaris:
Unlike every other ... I'm not going to say good or bad. This is just how I do it. We have a specific niche service. People see ... I basically put the price and the results--the befores and afters and the price--right away, and that's cut down on all the wasted trips, the phone calls.
People know exactly what they're going to get, and they know exactly how much they're going to pay, and you'll see. It's right on the first ... It's the first thing you say, and it's in a lot of the Facebook ads. It's, "This is how much it costs. Look at how cool it is." That's not exactly what it says, but that's basically it. Those are the clicks I get.
Those are the people that submit the information, and that's why my conversion rate's high.
Steve Larsen:
Huh, that's interesting. That's really cool. I'm actually just taking ferocious notes, just so you know.
Yanni Fikaris:
Do what you've got to do.
Steve Larsen:
Yeah, just because there's several points I want to hit here of what you just mentioned. Number one, I hope everyone is listening or hears what Yanni is saying on this, because it's something that we teach, and I teach like crazy, is you've got to promote that core offer.
Whatever it is that's your business, that's the number one focus. That's the number one funnel to make first. It's too much of a temptation many times to go and say, "Hey, I've got this awesome Spraymen painter business. Why don't I go sell paint?"
Instead of the actual service, why don't I go sell this?
Why don't I sell this?
It starts distracting you from the core business. Anyway, I just wanted to reinforce that. It's so powerful. First, start with the core. Get that nailed down. Then, you can go to other front ends or back ends or whatever. Interesting.
Yanni Fikaris:
Can I cut you off just for one second?
Steve Larsen:
Yeah, totally.
Yanni Fikaris:
I wrote a funnel ... I had two. Well, I actually had more than two, but let's just say I had two for this conversation. I had one that was just specific in cabinet refinishing, because we do paint other things. Then, the other one that I had was interior painting, cabinet refinishing, and exterior painting, the three things that I like to do or that make me the most money.
It was too distracting for the people, even just with three options...
Steve Larsen:
Interesting.
Yanni Fikaris:
Even though they might just go there for cabinet refinishing, they saw the other two, and you're talking about the time on the page was ... I don't know the exact percentages, but it didn't convert. It was the same funnel, but I offered two other things that they weren't interested in, and automatically nobody wanted it, and my conversion ... I ended up just dumping and deleting the page.
Steve Larsen:
Wow, really?
Yanni Fikaris:
It was the one thing. It's that one thing that ... It's that one big ... They were there for one purpose. They clicked on it for one thing, and you offer them two more things? Forget it. It's too soon.
Steve Larsen:
That's so true. It's like other things they've got to go start to believe or they didn't know they had those other options, so it distracts them. Yeah, absolutely.
Yanni Fikaris:
Yeah, because they start thinking about other things. They start thinking about, "Oh, maybe I should get my inside painted or my outside, or this other thing." You're dealing with a distracted world or a distracted audience now. You've got to keep them super-focused on what you do best and what you can monetize most successfully for your business.
Steve Larsen:
Yeah, yeah. That's like buying a computer and walking up to the cashier. "Hey, thanks for the computer," and it's like, "Hey, don't worry. The next update, we'll fix the crashing issue."
"I didn't know there was a crashing issue. Are you kidding?" Then they go put it back. Anyway, okay, interesting. It's cool that ... It sounds like you're just following straight from the Expert Secrets book itself.
Yanni Fikaris:
Yeah, it is a good roadmap. There's no doubt about it. You've got to tweak it just a little bit, but don't stray away. When Russell talks about the arrows in the back and you're trying to find your own trail to the top. I mean, people climb Mount Everest the same way all the time.
There's a reason.
That's the quickest way to the result. If your goal is to the top of the mountain, A to B. If your goal is to pave a new way ... I mean, that's not usually what people's goal is.
Steve Larsen:
Yeah, absolutely. Now, along those lines, that's actually one of the questions I wanted to ask. You've got ClickFunnels. You're sorting this thing out, and you're building, I'm assuming ... Like you said, it's user friendly. Had you ever built a funnel before?
Yanni Fikaris:
Honestly, I used Leadpages, and it was a miserable attempt at marketing. That's what it comes down ... I mean, that's just my experience. Other people might have their own experiences, but I couldn't get it to work well. I could get it sort of looking cool, and then I was like, this is not as user friendly. I don't know what to do after this step, and then what? It was always like, and then what? People would submit their information in, and then what?
It just wasn't for me. I paid for the subscription for six months, and it detracted me away from marketing. That was one of the reasons I went back into print, because I let the people at the newspaper and the print shops do it for me. Then I turned on to ClickFunnels, and it was great.
Steve Larsen:
That's interesting. Yeah, hey, that's awesome. I can't comment too much on that, otherwise my eyes are going to start to twitch, and I'll start yelling and screaming profanities. You go in, and, like you said, it's user friendly. You can drag and drop and put all the things together.
I'm not trying to promote ClickFunnels with this.
I want to dive straight and more into you. How did you know what funnel to build? You know what I mean? There's a lot of different styles and options out there, and you're building one for paint. How did you know which one to actually put together?
Yanni Fikaris:
That's probably the key question. The first one I built was god ugly. Oh, my God, it was so ugly. It was a picture. It had three buttons. When I actually sent people to it, I was just like, "Listen. The webpage is pretty ugly, but you know the service." I just did it on a whim.
It was pretty bad, but it did work. There was no ... I didn't hack anybody else's at that point. I really just wanted to, and this is what I tell people ask me about ClickFunnels, is just go out there and build one, and then you get better at it. Then fine tune it, and then look back at what you did a month ago, and you'll laugh, but it starts getting better.
You start playing with the animation. You start playing with the layout. What happens is, when you build that ugly funnel, you start going on Facebook or wherever you're looking, and you start seeing good funnels in front of you.
Everything becomes a funnel, and then you're like, "I'm going to take that. I'm going to put that into my funnel, and I'm going to try it. Then, I'm going to see another funnel and I'm going to take a little bit of that and a little bit of this." Then you find one that's really good for what you have to do.
The downside is there's not many good painting funnels. There's some big national companies that have funnels, but they do a lot of other advertising. Let's just drop a name, CertaPro. They do a lot of radio ads and phone calls, so they have a call center.
They do radio ads. They're funnel is eh. It's really eh. I needed to find a funnel that was in your face service, brings out that price, without a lot of other minutiae, because I tried that with that three-tier cabinet painting, interior, and exterior. I needed a one-service funnel that I loved, and that's what I stuck to.
Steve Larsen:
That's fascinating. That's fascinating. You bring up an interesting point. We always tell people. There's a few people that have come up to me and they're like ... I'm not going to name the name, but someone on Facebook tagged Russell and I in this post, and they're like, "How can Russell build such ugly funnels?" I was like, "I'm his main builder. I spent a ton of time on that funnel. It's not ugly."
All these people are like, "It's not ugly." Other people are like, "Yeah, I've wondered that, too." There was this controversy back and forth about it. I got on there, and I was just like, "It doesn't matter what the thing looks like. It's the copy that sells. It's the offer that makes the sale." I mean, Frank Kern has got a white background with a headline a video and a button. That's it. His funnels don't look amazing or anything like that.
I appreciate you bringing a point that beauty in the funnel is not what converts. It's actually the offer. It's actually just the one thing. It's literally the one thing you're offering, and anything else can detract from it. It detracts the entrepreneur eventually, too, to think that I've got to make this thing look beautiful out of the gate.
Obviously, it does matter a little bit, but to go not launch because you're trying to make it beautiful or you're trying to make it look fantastic or function this way. It's totally a false idea.
Yanni Fikaris:
Exactly. The more you push towards that beauty, A. You're spending a lot of time doing something that may not help, and you just need to make it grow. You've got to stick with that one thing. The more you're distracted, the more people are going to be distracted.
Steve Larsen:
Yeah, absolutely. Do you mind walking through the funnel with us right here and just let us know? If you've got the one core offer, what's the first page look like, and the second one?
Yanni Fikaris:
All right, hang on. I'll bring it up on my ... Most people are looking at it on a mobile, so I'll do it there.
Steve Larsen:
Interesting. You've got that first page. I'm sure that ... Do you have a micro-commitment on that first page or is it straight to the order button? You say you put the price and everything straight on the ... right from the get-go, the very beginning.
Yanni Fikaris:
That's it. It's right before the fold. If you go to cabinetdoorpainting.com, you'll see it. It's a picture of a kitchen that we did, a little tag that said, "99% of painters cannot do this." I do some of the editing. Actually, I do all the editing. Then, right, it smacks you, "$100 per door and drawer. Schedule estimate." There's really nothing else.
There's nothing else to it, because the biggest question we had with cabinet refinishing is, "How much does it cost?"
People don't know the process. Let me get into the process. If you scroll down to the pictures, you could see it, but their biggest concern right away that you have to either move forward or stop is how much is this going to cost? The biggest attraction is it's cheaper than doing a full kitchen renovation. If you hit them with their number one question right away, you're either opening the gates to people scheduling the appointment or you're not.
What we've seen is everybody who has scheduled the appointment ... Our close rate on people that actually schedule an appointment is in the 90s. People know exactly what they're going to get. We have videos that we send to them. Why our process is better. Why our material is better, but that's all the second part of the sale. They're already closed with the price and what they see before and after.
If you have a service company, and you have a niche, and it's specific, and your service is great, and you've showed it to them, and you tell them how much it's going to cost, what else needs to happen in the sale? You just have to perform the job. You have to schedule it. I've had people send this in, follow up with a phone call saying, "We're sold. We know how much it's going to cost, but when can you do it?" That's it: when. They need to see it. These are the questions.
Steve Larsen:
Huh, so I mean, you basically are closing people. They're closing themselves with this kind of front end page basically, right?
Yanni Fikaris:
Exactly. When you see the funnel, and if you're a painter or you're a homeowner, you can tell. These are our jobs. We didn't take these offline. These are our jobs. You know that you're going to get, so there's no question about ... They're not getting prices from somebody else, and if they do get prices from somebody else, they're not going to submit their information.
If they're going to go with the cheaper guy, the cheaper guy's not going to do it our way, and you're not going to have results like this.
They do all the research before, and, we can get into this later, but the Facebook re-target. They've already seen the video. They might have went to the landing page, saw the price, didn't put their information in because they wanted to get other prices, and we've had this conversation, and I know what's going on. They get other prices. The other guys are, let's say, either the same or a little cheaper, but they don't think that the results are going to be the same.
The re-target works, because it goes right after the people that saw the video, landed on the page, was in there for three seconds or whatever, and then now they're submitting their information, because they're already sold. It lets them sell themselves. That's why I designed this funnel this way.
Steve Larsen:
That's fascinating. Okay, so I'm just running back through here. You've got the first page. It says, "$100 per door." There's before and after shots, and it then it says, basically, schedule. Then people who leave, you are re-targeting them, I'm assuming, with Facebook ads.
Yanni Fikaris:
Correct.
Steve Larsen:
Then, as far as, and I definitely want to ask about that in a second, but when people hit schedule, though, what happens then?
Yanni Fikaris:
It's just a pop-up. It pops up. It says, your name, email address, phone number, and a promo code. Now, the promo code is how I track which ad groups are working the best. Every ad group that I have has a different promo code name. Then I also have one that I give out to people when I see them. Let's say, my promo code online is FREE123 or whatever it is, make one up. I know that it's from the Facebook group. That's that.
Now, if I do SPRAYMAN15, I've physically spoken to somebody and I said, "Listen. If you're interested"--or I give them a business card--"put SPRAYMAN15 on the promo code, and you'll get" ... It's the same coupon, but I know where it's coming from.
Steve Larsen:
Sure.
Yanni Fikaris:
That's it. They get that. They schedule the thing. They get an email from me. It's automated. It comes out, I want to say, about 15 to 20 minutes later. It's not automatic, so it doesn't look like a robot. It comes out a little later, and we schedule right away. That's the key to it. I tell them to send me pictures of their kitchen. I try to reduce the amount of time that I'm actually going out. I can price this up, looking at the job in photos.
I'm here or I'm at a job, somebody sends me, I say, every angle of every cabinet. You're just trying to be seamless with your process or whatever your product is, and you have to be seamless in the sale. You don't want to waste your time.
Steve Larsen:
Okay, with the scheduling process, there's something really key here. They're not necessarily choosing a spot in your schedule. Basically, they're submitting, and then you call them back immediately.
Yanni Fikaris:
Correct, yeah. I'll call them back. In the email, it says, "If text is better, text me," or, "We'll text each other," and that works a lot. People who would rather text, it's not old school, but I'm open to it. That's fine. They're not picking a time in the schedule to perform their job. We're booking into like October, November, at this point.
Steve Larsen:
Huh, that's insane.
Yanni Fikaris:
Yeah, we're doing these back ... You saw the sales. It's like back to back to back to back.
Steve Larsen:
It's amazing. It's so amazing. There's something in here that is really key, and I don't know if you did this on purpose or what, but it actually reinforces something that we do in our own phone sales, as well. Usually when we do some kind of application style funnel, where it's similar to what you've done, and there's a scheduling aspect in it.
Every single time we go and we say, "Schedule," and they actually pick a time for us to call them, it always fails 100%, because 90% of them aren't just going to show up or they're not going to answer the phone.
If there's a future based time, where they're like ... I like the software Calendly, because you can go choose times for ... Unless they've already paid money, there's nothing that holds their feet to the fire, so we found that 90% of the leads with a scheduling software or something on the back just dies.
It's so clever to me, so you're saying "Schedule," which sounds so much more low barrier to entry. It sounds so much less scary to say "Schedule" than it does, "Hey, I'm going to call you in 10 minutes," and you get them back on the phone. That's fascinating, so it's "Schedule," but you call them immediately, and that way's always, huh, that's a million times better.
Yanni Fikaris:
Yeah, because they're not getting ... Even though they're really requesting services or getting a quote or whatever they're used to seeing, that in my mind is, they're so used to seeing it, and then there's no, not that there's no value to it, but it starts getting commonplace, and "Schedule estimate" is very specific. You're clicking this button to schedule an estimate.
You're not picking this button to get a price, because it's already there. You're not picking this button for any other reason, and I'm really taking Russell's "knock that big domino down." I take out small snippets and small sections, and I'm walking through as the user, and I'm saying, "What's the big domino? What's the hurdle?"
Let me just ease this and make the wording as specific as I can for whatever I'm trying to get them to do.
I don't want them to ask me how much it's going to cost, because I already did that. That rarely happens. People don't go, "Is this going to cost two grand or 10 grand?" They go, "I have 61 cabinets. It's going to cost me $6100. When can you do it?" That's it.
Steve Larsen:
That's awesome.
Yanni Fikaris:
Yeah, it is. I love it.
Steve Larsen:
Yeah, that's so cool. That's so cool. Okay, front page, just walking everyone else through the funnel as well on the call with us. Okay, front page, you say $100 per door. We've got before and after shots, Schedule Estimate, a pop-up, and it asks for name, phone, address.
Do you ask for email?...
Yanni Fikaris:
I do ask for email.
Steve Larsen:
You do, obviously, because, okay ... Then after that, you say, there's a Submit button, right? What happens after they click Submit?
Yanni Fikaris:
They go to the third page. It just says, "Thank you. We'll contact you," or, "Thank you for the estimate. We'll get right to you," and we do. We call them within 15 minutes. They'll get an email from me within 15 minutes. That's the next auto ... There's four steps, so that's the next automated step, and then somebody from the office calls. If they get the email and they want to text, they'll text. At that point, the sale has to take over.
The actual person has to talk. You can't go back and forth with technology. Somebody has to get on the phone and explain the process. The reason I do that is our process is involved. It's kind of hard to, without-
Steve Larsen:
Like vetting people out almost?
Yanni Fikaris:
I get so passionate about what we do, you can feel it when I'm talking to you.
Steve Larsen:
Oh, yeah.
Yanni Fikaris:
I love to talk. I love to sell. That's probably what I should do, besides painting, is just sell stuff. When I'm on the phone with them, they can feel my passion. It just closes the door. I can't wait to do what we do at their house, and they can't wait to see the next video. Usually, we're videoing the job we're on now, and I get excited.
I'm like, "Listen. I'm going to send you the videos before they're edited, or you can come out and see what we're doing." We've had people come to other projects. They just want to see, and they love it!
Steve Larsen:
You're kidding.
Yanni Fikaris:
At that point, we take over. The actual person takes over, the salesperson takes over. Usually it's myself who takes over at that point. Now I'm talking to the client. There's nothing else to it in our business. The only thing they'll get in technology after that ... They'll get a proposal in writing that they have to agree to electronically, but everything else, it starts to go hands-on after that, and that's how we close all of our business.
Steve Larsen:
Just more on the closing process itself, so if they don't answer the phone, do you follow up with them again later? Do you put them on some kind of a ... I don't know. What do you do after, if they don't answer? You just don't it?
Yanni Fikaris:
Well, yes and no. I don't do the crazy high school girlfriend routine, where I'm calling, calling, text, text, call, email. That just doesn't work. Just like distraction, overbearing doesn't work. There's a point that you have a good service, and you have to monetize your time effectively. If you're going to chase somebody down, you give them fair warning. "Listen, I'm going to" ... Don't do it the first time. "If you don't call me back, I'm never going to call you again." That's ridiculous, too.
You call them...
You do exactly what you say you're going to do. "I'm going to call you in 15 minutes," so you call them in 15 minutes. If they don't pick up, I don't leave a voicemail. I'll email them, and then I'll say, "I left you a message. Shoot me a call. Here's my number if you want to text me if it's easier." This is really where we get the texts. If texting is easier for you. Some people are dismissive to our initial phone call. They don't want to talk to people.
Steve Larsen:
That's massive, yeah.
Yanni Fikaris:
That's just part of the world we live in today, so you want to open them up to a text. Give them your personal cellphone. For us, we're selling $5000 to $50,000 paint jobs. "You'd better give me your cellphone." That's all I've got to tell you, so we do it. Here's my cellphone.
I might email one more time after that, just to say, "Hi," in a few days, but if they're not going to buy at that point, something happens where they're going to circle back. We've had people circle back and say, "We went down a different road. It was horrible," or, "Something happened, life event, and now we're ready for it."
Steve Larsen:
Huh, wow. Do you even mention the texting option during the actual opt-in process?
Yanni Fikaris:
No.
Steve Larsen:
That's awesome. That's way awesome, because that's got to pull in so many more people, who are serious about talking with you than if you'd say, "Hey, just go ahead and text me." If you said that right out the gate, that obviously would bring in a different person.
Yanni Fikaris:
Yeah, you have 15 texts open with all these people trying to get your product, your knowledge, your this, you don't even know who you're talking to. You've built funnels. Imagine if somebody was like, "I want you to build our funnel," and you're like, "All right, here's my cellphone, just text me," and that's what you put on Facebook, you'd have a million people.
Steve Larsen:
Oh, at least. I already do. I can't handle it.
Yanni Fikaris:
It's not, especially in a service environment, higher dollar, and I would definitely not do it for lower dollar ... If you did a $50 and you start giving your cellphone number out, it would be crazy.
Steve Larsen:
Oh, that'd be terrible.
Yanni Fikaris:
There's a continuum there. For how much are you willing to give out your private information, and then you have to do it, and then just do what you say. People will respect that, and they will not ... They don't pussyfoot around this. They're not going to hard sell you back with a negotiation.
The best example, and this might not be for everybody, but the best example is when you go into a Mercedes dealership or the Range Rover or a Ferrari dealership, wherever you go for your high-end cars. If you ever try to negotiate with these guys, they're like, "Listen."
They're like, "You see that sign out there. That says Ferrari. The only thing you're going to ask is what color and when is it going to be delivered. There is no more negotiations." That's it. That's your close. We're not there, but that's the mentality you need to hold for your time, because that's what's limited for everybody, especially in the service industry.
Steve Larsen:
Do you have sales guys? I mean, it sounds like you have one or two at least. Actual phone guys at all, who call up, or is it all you're running the whole thing?
Yanni Fikaris:
Zero.
Steve Larsen:
That's amazing! It's you doing the followups. You doing all the ... I'm assuming you have some kind of notification setup, "Hey, someone just filled out the form," and you just call them immediately.
Yanni Fikaris:
Yeah, right through ClickFunnels. I get an email. It's one of my-
Steve Larsen:
Automation tabs.
Yanni Fikaris:
My automation alerts, yep. Listen, somebody just sent it in. I actually put my phone settings on 15-minute alerts, so if you did it in 15 minutes, it's realistic. The reason I did that is I get to it right away.
Steve Larsen:
Sure.
Yanni Fikaris:
If I say I'm going to email you in 15 minutes or call you, that's where I want it to be, so I'm no later than 15 minutes when they submit it. If I got the alert, and this is just a hack for me, but if I got that alert right away, and I called, it just promotes neediness, as the service provider.
There is a time that you have to allow people to wait to want something more, and I've found out 15 minutes is the threshold. Half an hour, they've moved onto something else. Five minutes is too soon. Ten minutes ... Fifteen minutes just worked for us.
Steve Larsen:
Let them wait to want it more. That's powerful, very powerful, and it's cool you've tested that, too, 15 minutes. Okay, a year from now, all right, you've continued doing this. I'm sure you're going to perfect it even more as you keep going. Do you think you will bring on another sales guy or something?
Yanni Fikaris:
My goal is to either license this whole model from the sale, from what we do to the sales, and give it out as a licensee or a franchise...
From my two- to three-man team, and the numbers that you're seeing, that's with a two- and possibly three-man team at times--those are the numbers we're doing--is to be able to put this into a package, train people what to do, and say, "Here is what we do. You can either use our branding and become one of us, or we can use your brand and then make you follow this model." That's where I'm going to be in six months.
Steve Larsen:
That is so powerful. When I saw what you were doing, obviously ... I'm in ClickFunnels headquarters right now. We're in our cool sound booth room, and from the position that we're able to sit in, we see so many funnels. We see how it's working, how they're not working, in different industries, with different ads, all across the board.
When I saw yours, I was like, "I don't know anyone who is in the painting business, who is using a funnel, period." You're not just using it, you're killing it with it. It's cool to see.
You obviously have proven the model, and you're thinking about the franchising. I have one more just followup question about closing, and then, if you're okay with it, if you've got time, I wanted to ask a little bit about the ad, as well, because that's probably the next scary piece for people.
Yanni Fikaris:
Sure.
Steve Larsen:
Have you noticed much of a difference between the close rate with someone who's engaged in a text message conversation with you versus an actual phone?
Yanni Fikaris:
I like to ... That's a good question. I would say that ... Oh, that is a good question.
Steve Larsen:
Because there's a lot of parts to that I can think of.
Yanni Fikaris:
Yeah, there is definitely a lot of parts. A lot of times, my phone calls will end up deferring to a text, and that's what I see. A lot of times, we do out-of-state moves, where people are coming in, and they start with a text, and we close with a text. No matter what, we're always going to a technology piece somehow.
If I send you an email, I'm going to text you, "I sent you the email. Here's a proposal. Just sign it," whatever, and then they say, "Yes." I would say that texting ends up being part of the close more often than the actual phone call.
Steve Larsen:
Really? That's actually opposite than what I was assuming, interesting.
Yanni Fikaris:
I think I can close them on the phone. Maybe I can close you on the phone, but the text is definitely a part of that afterwards. Once we have this conversation, we can go and then we can digress into a text message conversation, because I've hit all the key points, and texting is a lot easier.
The message is there. That's what I'm thinking off the top of my head. I could, from now, for another two months figure it out, but that's what I think.
Steve Larsen:
That's fascinating, though. I'm really stuck on this, because I think it's really interesting, and it's not an area that most people jump into, I don't think, that much, but would you say that ... I mean, does pretty much every sale involve both?
Yanni Fikaris:
I like to get you on the phone after you've written down what you're looking for. I think writing down ... I ask people, "What exactly do you need from me?" Maybe not in so many words and maybe not so harsh, but a one-sentence question, "What are you looking for? What do you need me to do?"
Then, once I realize I can't text back my explanation or anything else, I pick up the phone. I want to hear what you have to say. I am making sure I am also attracting the right, not attracting the right clients. I am making sure that I'm also working for the right clients that fit my business.
I think, as a service provider, the power of not wasting your time, and I don't think I could express this anymore, and you probably got it from the 10th time I said it, but you only have a limited amount of time. You have to work for the right clients, and you are in the power position to work for the right client or the wrong client.
If you're chasing the money, you're going to work for anybody who has your deposit. If you're going to work for the right client, it has to be fun. You have to get excited. Otherwise, it'll start to be mundane. You start to hate it, and then whatever you've built is going to just disintegrate, because you're just working for anybody.
I have to hear you on the phone. I have to. I've got to hear you...
Steve Larsen:
Yeah, yeah, and that makes total sense...
Now, we always tell people, and obviously you're very familiar with this concept, that if you change the bait, you're going to change the client. It sounds like you've obviously gone through the opposite bad part of that. What was the difference in the bait that you've created? You know what I mean?
What was the bad client like, and what were the differences you made to boost that client?
Yanni Fikaris:
That's a really good question. Before I put the cost in the advertisement or on the first page or before the fold, before the cost was in there, everybody had me out to their house, and I would go.
How much is it going to cost to refinish a 10 x 10 kitchen. Oh, let me go see it in person, and I'm thinking to myself, Yanni, what are you doing driving? You know exactly what this is going to cost? Why would you not settle this right away? These are just people fishing for numbers.
They want to know your process...
They see you on Facebook. They know you know all the information. They might just go tell somebody else to do it, which they probably wouldn't get the same results, but you get the idea.
Steve Larsen:
Sure.
Yanni Fikaris:
When I changed the bait to ... I don't like to fish, so when you change the bait to the fish you're going after, the exact meal that they're looking for, it gets everybody else out of the ocean, and you're going specifically for that one target. It might sound rude, but that's just reality.
It's marketing and sales...
You can't just put every sort of bait out there. You're going to get everything to bite. That's not what you're looking for.
Steve Larsen:
It's interesting you brought that up, because obviously with these six different categories, there are rules between the six that, hey, you can do this in this industry.
You can't in this one, and vice versa. I'd say that this is probably one of the biggest differences between the professional services area and the author/speaker/coach/consultant area, because in the author and speaker and coaches/consultant spot, most of the time price is not brought up at the very beginning, but it's cool that you do that.
You don't get on a webinar and somebody's like, "Just so you know, at the end of this you're going to be charged $1000." You know what I mean. You don't do that, but by creating, by making cost an upfront thing, and there's a lot of coaches I know that'll do that, too, but stereotypically this industry or this area seems to be one of the only places where that actually works.
Yanni Fikaris:
I can't tell you for other, anything else. I'm not yet a coach or selling anything technology based. I have sat on webinars, and some of them are very inspiring, and you wait until the end to find the price. You are still waiting to the end to find how much it's going to cost. I've tried that, and I've-
Steve Larsen:
Time wasters.
Yanni Fikaris:
Time waste. There's a big company out here. It's a big plumbing/heating company, and they put you through this ... They double team you, and they come in polo shirts and khakis, and two guys come. They have a portfolio of all their services. No prices on the page. They go through the song and dance, and at the end, they're like, "Here. Here's the number.
It's four times more expensive than Joe, but we guarantee this for 10 years." People are like, "Holy moly! I can't pay that! The other guy charges $200. You're charging $1000."
He's like, "Aw, but the song and dance." They're like, "Yeah, but" ... In the service industry, you're either--and this is really cool--you're either the cheapest or the best. I think Russell might have wrote that down, but if not, maybe he'll put it in his next book, but you're either the cheapest guy or the best guy, and that's who you're looking for.
If you want to be the cheapest guy, be the cheapest guy. If you want to be the best guy, be the best guy, and then you dictate the price first.
Now, let me back into this. I studied the mind in college. I was going to be a neurosurgeon, so I have a lot of psych and philosophy background.
Steve Larsen:
Wow.
Yanni Fikaris:
I might have a little advantage on just how the mind perceives a lot of things, but for me, if I want to be the best guy, the easiest way to get rid of all the bottom, the people that don't want to pay, is to tell them how much it costs.
Steve Larsen:
Yeah, it's true.
Yanni Fikaris:
You know? When the rich guy ... All our clients aren't rich; maybe that's the wrong word, but when the guy goes to the Ferrari dealership, he knows he's going to spend 240. He knows it.
Steve Larsen:
It's a status thing.
Yanni Fikaris:
Exactly. You don't have to tell him that. It doesn't make a difference what the price is. He already knows he's going to pay, but that's the best. When you go into the Hyundai used car dealership, they're waiting for the price at the end, because it's a negotiation. Do you see how that changes? It's a menace to a lot of people, but most people, their sales pitch is they're waiting to get the courage to tell the price.
Steve Larsen:
They're like, "No, I won't tell you. Here it is, because I'm not the best, so let's negotiate."
Yanni Fikaris:
Exactly. I have daughters. I tell my daughters all the time, "Sometimes there's no room to negotiate. It's a win-win, a lose-lose, or no deal." Go read some good books about negotiation. The philosophy has never changed. It's either good for both of us or it's not going to work. The middle ground, you control me, and I get spiteful. It doesn't work in the service industry.
It just doesn't. Hands-on, wasting your own time, physical, employees, workman's comp, I mean, just so many things that whoever's listening to this in the service industry realizes that you're either the cheapest or you're the best. Charge for being the best. Get rid of all the people that are just going to price negotiate you, and then move on.
Steve Larsen:
Yeah, I remember when I started doing that for funnel building services. I don't currently do it for anyone else anymore at this time, but when I first ... I was like, "I'm going to build it for 10 grand," and it brought in all these people, and I was like, "You know what? I really think I'm way better than that now, and I'm 2X-ing businesses. It's worth way more than 10 grand. I'll do 20."
Then it went to 50, and then some guy came recently and offered 100, and I was like, it's so funny to say no to those kinds of opportunities, because I know that that's the same thing that you're probably going to run into, because there's only one of you, and you're awesome.
What's nice about what you're saying right now is that you, and it's the same thing I've found, is you get to be choosy with who you want to work with.
There's just some people, it doesn't matter how much they'll spend and will give to you. I turned down a 100K one, just because I knew I did not want to work with the guy, himself.
I was like, ah, I feel like we're not going to get along. That's not worth any amount of money to me, but when you work toward being best, rather than cheapest, in my opinion, that's the one to go for. Obviously, if you're in eComm or other places like that, it's a little bit different if you can be the cheapest and really get away with it, but by trying to strive for the best.
How many people does Ferrari turn away?
Probably a ton, because they get to choose the client.
Do you qualify? Do you get to qualify?
It goes back to, I think, what Russell talks about in the book, too. Everything's status. You're protecting status. You're putting status at risk. Whatever it is. As people are moving through the funnel, and as they get ... Only because I can tell that you've really read his book am I going to ask this, because it's kind of intense, but what have you done to protect somebody's status inside of the funnel? What kind of guarantee or what kind of safety nets have you given them emotionally, so that their status is protected?
Yanni Fikaris:
Well, if you look at our funnel, the people are there for a result. They want something, and they want a really good result. What they really want is not to spend a lot of money, so, in the world of status, their pocketbook stays full, and when we're done, their kitchen looks like they did spend enough to empty their pocketbook.
Steve Larsen:
Interesting.
Yanni Fikaris:
That's a very basic way to look at it, but let's curtail into Facebook ads through this conversation.
Steve Larsen:
Yeah.
Yanni Fikaris:
I have two audiences. I have women and I have men. The women want ... Listen. Don't write me nasty emails, if you don't like what I'm going to say. This is just scientific data that I've collected.
Steve Larsen:
It's marketing.
Yanni Fikaris:
This is marketing. The women, more or less, want the result. They want the outcome to look like the photos on our webpage, and they get it, so their status goes up. It first mentally goes up when they're like, "Wow! This kid can really make this kitchen look like that? Look at the before and afters. I love it."
Now, the husband's status gets shocked when he's like, "Oh, my God, I don't want that. It looks so expensive," but once you tell him the price, then he feels okay. He's like, "Okay, I can pay for this." Now, I say it like that, where the woman decides, and the husband pays, because 87% of my clients, that's the relationship.
The husband foots the bill for the job...
Steve Larsen:
87.
Yanni Fikaris:
Now, I'm not telling you that is across the country. I'm telling you that's my clients, and I only know that because I ask.
Steve Larsen:
Right.
Yanni Fikaris:
Because I need to know. If you want to better your business, you need to know who you're actually selling to. If you're selling to men, then advertise to men. If you're selling to women, advertise to women. Most of the time, I'm getting women first, and then the man is actually the one paying.
Steve Larsen:
Fascinating.
Yanni Fikaris:
If you go into our Facebook, how our Facebook ads play out, I do something similar. I'm advertising pictures and results to women, and I'm advertising price to males.
Steve Larsen:
Interesting, so do you literally have two separate Facebook audiences running those separate ads?
Yanni Fikaris:
Correct.
Steve Larsen:
Wow!
Yanni Fikaris:
Absolutely. I never mix the two. It doesn't work.
Steve Larsen:
That's so cool.
Yanni Fikaris:
If you saw a breakdown between, let's say, Facebook ad group one and Facebook ad group two, one is photos and no mention of cost, and that's directed towards women, and the other one is a basic one and mentioned towards how much is it going to cost or save. A lot of big ones, sometimes, it saves $35,000 to $50,000 versus a full kitchen renovation. That's a good one that hits on men. Another one that hits is we can do this, we start on Monday, we end on Friday.
Steve Larsen:
Oh, time.
Yanni Fikaris:
They want to know the time, time, yeah. You have to understand the psyche of your clients, and if you don't know that, write it down. Think about, besides who do you want your ideal client to be? ... Like Russell says, "Who do I want?"
Steve Larsen:
Sure.
Yanni Fikaris:
You need to know who you've had. You need to know who was your best client and who was your worst client. Two percent of our clients are nut-job crazies. It doesn't matter, you could give them a pile of gold, and they would say you're the most ridiculously overpriced person in the world. You could pay for their job, and they hate you.
Two percent...
Steve Larsen:
Yeah, I call them the dirties.
Yanni Fikaris:
The dirties. Yeah, we do 115 jobs actually a year, 2% of them are nuts. It just happens. Those are outliers. You don't put them into any group.
Steve Larsen:
Sure.
Yanni Fikaris:
They could be anybody, but you need to know exactly who you've sold to in the last, let's say, five years. That would help. Last six months, I mean, that's not enough of a pool. Once you get that, that's where Facebook starts to come in, because Facebook is integrated so well with that.
Steve Larsen:
Right, they're everywhere.
Yanni Fikaris:
They know-
Steve Larsen:
They've got every demographic.
Yanni Fikaris:
Every demo, and use it! Don't think that, wow, if I write this, I'm being judgmental. You have to be judgmental. This is marketing. You have to. You're spending your own money. If you were going to say, "I'm going to spend 10 grand."
I will spend 10 grand a month, but let's say you're going to spend $1000 a month and not be judgmental and send this ad to everybody and just throw it away, or I'm going to be a little judgmental, and I'm going to be very specific, and I want to know exactly who I've sold to, and that's who I'm going to advertise to.
Steve Larsen:
Amazing, amazing...
I know we've been going a while. Just, it's super cool. Most people don't geek out about the marketing part as much as you do, which is refreshing for me. I wanted to ask, and then we'll end here soon, because I know we're way over on time, but I appreciate your time here.
Yanni Fikaris:
It's all right.
Steve Larsen:
When you first started out on the Facebook ad and doing the audiences and such, did you already know all of that data?
Yanni Fikaris:
No. Oh, God, no. Somebody just asked me that on a post. How'd you figure this out? I was like, "Dude, trial and error, and mostly error."
Steve Larsen:
Yeah, yeah.
Yanni Fikaris:
The one thing I did know is who my first contact was over the last five years, even in the last two years. I primarily talk to a woman first, and that made me think that that's the person that I needed to advertise towards.
At first, I did both, and then it was a huge percentage of women, compared to men, who were responding to the ads, so naturally I just took men right out of it, and it didn't affect anything. Then I ran the two splits. Women are, they're engaging way more than men. If I split my money in half, it would still be more women than men. If I did 90% men, 10% women, it would still be more of a woman.
They're engaging more for this service...
Now, again, I can't tell you for every service, but for this specific service, I'm engaged way more from a woman between 34 and 65, than a man any age.
Steve Larsen:
Wow, wow! To know that, that's pretty awesome. I mean, I saw the post that you put out there. You said you're getting $4 CPA. Is that right?
Yanni Fikaris:
Yeah, we spent. Let me tell you, the month before I posted ... I did this three months in a row. I did one a month ago to show the last two months, and I did it this month just to say, "Wow, man. This isn't a fluke. This is pretty cool." The two months we did 165 grand in business, I spent 900 bucks on Facebook ads.
Steve Larsen:
Are you serious?
Yanni Fikaris:
Yeah, dude, I could show you the printout on Facebook, and I think this month we might have spent 300.
Steve Larsen:
That's got to be some kind of freaking record. I'm not joking. Holy crap!
Yanni Fikaris:
What happens is--you know this--it starts to pick up-
Steve Larsen:
Other, yeah.
Yanni Fikaris:
People just start to see the brand, and the word of mouth, and we get a lot of ... I'll tell you a good story. I had a lady call, and she was like, "I need my cabinets refinished, and I called two of my friends"--this is a lady talking--"I called two of my friends and asked them for recommendations.
One said you," and she goes, "I called the other one, and the other one said you. Then I went on Facebook, and I saw your pictures." She's like, "I'm sold."
If you have a specific product or service that's excellent, that's the best, you start to be the person that people talk about when they want that. Painting, in general, isn't enough. There's a million painters and everybody can do it. Name one person that could bring the equipment that we have, that we show online, and we could talk about advertising and why we're the best, because what we show people, we do. There's value in the proof, or there's value in establishing what you actually are doing for them.
It's not just the results. They're seeing the process. They're seeing how this comes together, and they're like, "Holy crap! This other guy doesn't do anything like this." There's value in that, and it starts to close the door.
When you see ... We didn't even post these yet, because I don't want to post too many things at the same time. I don't want people to liken our company with so many different things, they get distracted, but we have another brand that I have, that I didn't even post this yet, but it's another painting company, and it just does move-out painting.
Totally different brand...
I'll send you the logos, but that painting company has nothing to do with cabinet refinishing. It has nothing to do with exterior painting. It's specifically just for people who move out and want their house painted.
Steve Larsen:
Wow! That niche-
Yanni Fikaris:
That's the niche. Cabinet refinishing's a niche, that's the niche, and I have one for exterior painting. Those are the niches, but there's so many people on the market, so you have to be the best.
You have to show people the process. My advertisements for cabinet refinishing, they basically go something like this, and I also post on my regular Facebook page, not to be too long-winded, but it says, with a video or a photo, "If your guy or gal or painter doesn't start like this, he'll never end like this."
I'll show two pictures, one of us completely maxed out and prepped out, not an inch to be painted on, and another one a finished product, and now you, in your head, you're like, "Damn, I hired Joe's Painting, and there's freaking paint everywhere!"
Steve Larsen:
Interesting.
Yanni Fikaris:
Now, it's the dichotomy of cost. You want Joe's Painting because he's cheap, but did you really want Joe's Painting?
Steve Larsen:
Right, no, you probably didn't. You don't want the result attached to it.
Yanni Fikaris:
Right.
Steve Larsen:
Absolutely. Now, you've clearly become a Facebook ad expert, probably, through this process, out of necessity, which is awesome. It's cool, because it sounds like you wrote the ad, and the ad pretty much stays the same, or does it? Are you split testing ads or are you split testing audiences? You know what I mean?
Yanni Fikaris:
I had a couple ads. The funny thing is the ads that I have, or the ad that actually works is not any picture you see on the landing page, which I thought that was odd. I thought that people would want to see the ad, then the landing page, and be the same. Now, I tried that, but what was happening was I think I was getting too much aversion to cost from the ad.
People were like, "Dude, that looks like a magazine. I can't afford that. I don't care. I'm not even going to ask for the price." It's like, I can't go to the Ferrari dealership, because it's too expensive, so I had to back that into a more economic ad, almost like how Mercedes went from their real high class, now they're putting things into the $30,000 price range for more people.
It's still high end, but more people can afford it, so I did the same thing.
Instead of using my DSLR and flash and making the picture look like we actually publish it onto our webpage, I took a picture on my iPhone 6 and didn't edit it and had it a little crooked, just a little, not obscene, but just to know that somebody actually stood there and took it. That ad worked the best.
Steve Larsen:
Amazing!
Yanni Fikaris:
It's amazing! Listen. Some things you can't explain. Do you know what I mean?
Steve Larsen:
Sure, right.
Yanni Fikaris:
It just, it doesn't work like you thought it would work, but you have to test it.
Steve Larsen:
Right. Basically, you widen the net with the ad, but then you make it tighter what seems at the landing page and have all the criteria before it. That's brilliant, my friend. That is a funnel.
Yanni Fikaris:
That's exactly what it is. You want a million people to see it for nothing, then you want to re-target the people that are interested into the funnel or into the ad that has the cost. Now, they're not going to click on it to spend your money. If they're going to click on it, they're going to spend their money.
Steve Larsen:
Interesting. Interesting, so super cheap, big, wide open net, goes down to tight, and then ... I've kept you on way too long, but I'm just having fun with you now. Everyone else who's listening, you just have the privilege of listening, because this is all for me now.
Yanni Fikaris:
Yeah, keep-
Steve Larsen:
How do you run the ... What's different about the re-targeting ads? Do you keep it more of the strict style then, or do you widen it back out to the bigger net?
Yanni Fikaris:
No, I go to people who have seen a video or an ad placement. It's pretty specific. What I've noticed is a lot of people will go to the re-target and buy from the same ad. I have one that re-targets basically to a copy of the same ad. That works for me.
Steve Larsen:
Oh, really?
Yanni Fikaris:
Not a new picture. The new picture ones re-target ... Let's say I have a picture of kitchen A, and they re-target. I've copied everything, except for the picture, and I change the picture. It's like a new dimension for them. It's the same guy, but that's the thing that doesn't work. Once they re-target to the same copy, maybe different words, but the same picture, that works.
Steve Larsen:
Interesting, so same picture, just switching the copy on the re-targeting ad.
Yanni Fikaris:
Right. The re-targeting ad has more things about cost. Either they're going to save money or they're going to spend 100 ... I don't want them to click it unless they're going to spend $100 per door. That's what keeps my cost down. If your adverse to cost, once you see that on your screen, you're going to say, "I'm not clicking this. It doesn't make a difference. I just can't afford this," or, "I'm not going to pay." Once you see it, you're like, "Oh, my God, that's better than a kitchen renovation, because I'm going to save 50 grand.
Let's find out more," and they've already seen it before.
Steve Larsen:
That's fascinating, so you go through it. You keep the net open and big, and you say, and it's more about the process, right? Hey, this is what I did, little iPhone 6 picture, and then you go to landing page. It gets a little bit tight, but then on the ad on the way out, the re-targeting ad, it's more about cost to just sift out the last fence-sitters, I guess, right?
Yanni Fikaris:
Basically.
Steve Larsen:
Numbers-wise, how do those usually perform? Do you get a lot of closing from that, as well?
Yanni Fikaris:
The closing ratio of any ... If you go to the landing page and actually snitch our information, we are in the 90s of doing the job. The few times that we don't do the job, it's life changes, something happens, or they fall off the face of the planet, which really doesn't happen.
I have a whiteboard in my office. I'll take a snapshot of it.
Steve Larsen:
Sure.
Yanni Fikaris:
The top part is the jobs that we scheduled. The bottom is, we call them the unknowns. We're not really sure, maybe they are, maybe they're not. There's one at, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16 ... We have 16 jobs for this month.
One is an unknown. I'm talking to her at two o'clock today.
Steve Larsen:
Fascinating!
Yanni Fikaris:
They total ... I could do this. This is for this month [inaudible 01:02:56] probably if not a little more than the month before that I posted.
Steve Larsen:
Powerful. Last question, then we'll go ahead and end. How long did it take you to get this whole funnel process down and really working? I mean, three months in a row, that's awesome, but I'm sure is months of figuring it out.
Yanni Fikaris:
I don't want to lie to you. I think I started in March.
Steve Larsen:
Okay, that's crazy, you know?
Yanni Fikaris:
You could check my receipt of ClickFunnels, but I'm pretty sure it was March or April.
Steve Larsen:
That's ... It's August, barely.
Yanni Fikaris:
It was right away, because I'm the guy, that nerd, that's going to stay up until four o'clock in the morning and make sure that everything is centered right, and why didn't this work? Let me just look at this other page one more time.
Steve Larsen:
Sure.
Yanni Fikaris:
It was a ... I need a challenge. That's my personality, so I was like, if somebody else is doing this, dude, I'm going to do this. I couldn't let it wait. The longest thing to do is wait for the ads to actually work, because it does take time. That was the most frustrating part.
Steve Larsen:
Sure.
Yanni Fikaris:
That's why, at first, the biggest failure and the biggest mistake that I think that people should avoid, but maybe they have to make it, just--I learn from my own mistakes--is casting that net and not tightening it up.
Steve Larsen:
Interesting.
Yanni Fikaris:
Remember how I told you I would go to appointments? I would go everywhere, try to do face-to-face, but these people weren't going to pay when I went out there anyway. Just because your funnel works, people actually submit their information, doesn't mean you're going to make money.
Steve Larsen:
Right, it doesn't mean the funnel works.
Yanni Fikaris:
Yeah, the funnel gets people, but you're getting the wrong people.
Steve Larsen:
Right.
Yanni Fikaris:
That takes some tailoring, and, like you said before, having the ability to tell people, "Dude, I can't work for you," or, "This isn't just a good project for both of us." That ownership of work, that takes time.
Not many people have that skill to turn away work. That gut instinct where you're like, dude ... You look at your buddies in the room or whoever you have in management, and you're like, I don't want to do this.
Steve Larsen:
This is not the one, yeah. You'd better run.
Yanni Fikaris:
I, for years ... Everybody makes the same mistake, because they really just want the paycheck, and that's just experience.
Steve Larsen:
Man, that's incredible. Man, I want to thank you so much for this. You have over-delivered to the nth degree, and I really appreciate it. Hey, just so people can follow you, they can see what you do, where are the places they should go to be watching what you're doing?
Yanni Fikaris:
I'm on Facebook...
I really, I guess I should get a public page more than my own page, but if you just go to Facebook and click in Yanni Fikaris, you can see what we do on a daily basis. Every day, we're putting out cabinets and promoting what we do. I'm sure, after this conversation, it's going to grow.
Steve Larsen:
Oh, yeah, absolutely. Just so you guys know, Fikaris, the spelling, it's F-I-K-A-R-I-S.
Yanni Fikaris:
That's correct.
Steve Larsen:
Yanni Fikaris. You're actual site where you're doing all this stuff ... Don't go jumble his numbers, everybody, but you can go check out what he's doing at cabinetdoorpainting.com, right?
Yanni Fikaris:
That's correct.
Steve Larsen:
Awesome. Man, I want to thank you very much. This has been fantastic. No matter what kind of professional service you're in, listen to what Yanni's been telling you. If you're a dentist, you're a lawyer, doctor, chiropractor, any trade, any area that's taken a lot of skill to develop, this can be used. A very simple, two-page funnel that is just totally killing it, but very, very ingenious.
I mean, every single spot, you have thought of and every single ... There's nothing on this funnel or in these pages or on these ads that is not there for a reason, and that is very rare. I think most of it, a lot of times haphazard at the beginning, which just makes sense, but, man, you have honed everything in. I want to thank you and thank you for all the value you've shared here.
Yanni Fikaris:
Thanks, Steve.
Steve Larsen:
Awesome. Thanks, man.
Yanni Fikaris:
All right, buddy.
Thanks for listening to Sales Funnel Radio. Please remember to subscribe and leave feedback. Want to get one of today's best Internet sales funnels for free? Go to salesfunnelbroker.com/freefunnels to download your prebuilt sales funnel today.
James is not only one of the most well connected individuals I've ever met, he's also got his B2B funnel totally dialed in...
Steve Larsen:
What's going on, everyone? This is Steve Larsen and you're listening to a very special and frankly quite unique episode of Sales Funnel Radio.
Speaker:
Welcome to Sales Funnel Radio, where you'll learn marketing strategies to grow your online business using today's best internet sales funnels, and now, here's your host, Steve Larsen.
Steve Larsen:
All right, you guys. Hey, I'm super excited to welcome you and our special guest today to the show. This is an episode I've never quite done before, and frankly, it's an area that I personally am still learning about sales funnels and I'm really excited to have him here with us today and I think part the curtain, let the veil down, so to speak. Very, very pumped to learn from him.
Guys, please help me welcome Mr. James Smiley. How you doing?
James Smiley:
What's going on, Steve?
Steve Larsen:
Living the dream, man.
James Smiley:
Woohoo.
Steve Larsen:
Living the dream.
James Smiley:
Thanks so much. This is going to be awesome.
Steve Larsen:
I'm excited that you're here. Just for everyone else, the first time I ever met James, my life is run off of an app Voxer, and pretty much my life, Russell's life, all of our lives, we live on this app of Voxer, and that's how we talk. I don't think I've ever called Russell on the phone ever. I don't know his number, you know what I mean? We all live on Voxer and I get Voxed a lot, from just lots of people. Sometimes it's about me creating new barriers just so I can have my own headspace, you know? But then also there was this guy who kept asking, he's like, "Hey, do you want" ... From these really big and really popular companies, "Will you build a funnel for these guys?" "Hey, what if you built a funnel for these guys?"
They were these huge companies, massive, massive, some of them billion dollar companies, and I was like, "Who is this guy? How is he" ... Number one, "Who is this?" Number two, "That would be cool, but how are you getting these leads? How do you find? That's insane." We have a lot of our own certification partners, ClickFunnels.
I have my own clients I've built for, but man, the people that you were talking about, I was like, I mean, "This is insane." Anyway, I don't know if I'm allowed to say any of the names, so that's the reason I'm not, but man, I just got to ask, how do you get into something like B2B funnel building?
James Smiley:
Yeah, no, thanks, Steve. Super excited to be here hanging out with you guys, and I'll just start by saying massive, massive ClickFunnels fan. Being following you guys since before ClickFunnels. I was actually working at-
Steve Larsen:
Oh, really?
James Smiley:
Yeah. I was following Russell from some research that we were doing at a big company that I was consulting with, and we were trying to figure out how big was this internet marketing thing going to be and content ... It was really content and where was content going.
It was really cool. It's just been awesome to see everything that's happened and been a massive consumer of everything that you guys do, so thanks for everything you guys are doing.
I guess to directly share how can somebody go from being an internet marketer or running an agency, or whatever they do now into getting B2B clients, I think one of the things I try to share with people is you've got to get face to face with these kind of people...
I think your chances go up exponentially if you can get face to face with them. One of the things that I've been doing and having a lot of success in the past couple years is running a webinar, mini webinar type of system where you could be running a lead or you could be running a lead ad or a Facebook ad or something, and running that into a small auto-webinar kind of scenario.
Believe it or not, even removing the login aspect, we've seen a lot of success. We've gotten a tremendous amount of appointments by sending a LinkedIn ad or a YouTube ad directly to a website, to a ClickFunnels page, where it's auto playing myself or one of our sales reps or whatnot, and then from there, they can just click to book, to book a meeting.
Steve Larsen:
And that's the main goal? You don't do anything else besides that's just the main goal, the interaction from?
James Smiley:
Yeah. Something that I've used for a long time, I actually learned this I want to say it was like in 2004 or 5, at a Chet Holmes event. Chet Holmes, Tony Robbins event. I think it was called Ultimate Business Mastery a long time ago.
Steve Larsen:
Sure.
James Smiley:
But I learned about the ideal thing to do is to try to broaden and generalize more your message and really hit on something that's new, cutting edge, innovative. Chet taught us year ago to do things like an executive report or an executive summary, and nowadays with technology, it's pretty easy to come up with something innovative.
You can look up online really innovative videos and blogs, and what are the trends in such and such technology. And then essentially what we're doing is we're saying, we're running an ad saying, "Mr. or Mrs. executive. Are you prepared for the 2020 blah blah blah revolution?"
Or, "Are you prepared for this and this? Join a three minute webinar," whatever you want to call it, "And let me explain it to you." The person there explaining it is my sales rep.
Steve Larsen:
Interesting.
James Smiley:
Yeah, and then at the end he or she is saying, "Well, I'd love to follow-up with you. I'd love to give you this $600,000 of research that we've done" or whatever that number is, "Book an appointment right now and I can give you this guide, I can hand you this guide," or whatever. We would always try to get face to face with them if we can.
Steve Larsen:
So do you run these local just to where you are mostly? Or I mean, you're getting on a plane? You're flying out to them a lot?
James Smiley:
Yeah. I think it really depends on what kind of business you're running. When I worked for much larger companies, our territory was across the nation, but in more of an agency model I've helped some internet marketers in the space, it's easy to set up a local roadshow or those kind of things through your town or through your city, where you can go and present some information.
Really hot things I would think would be for your guys' audience maybe like where is Facebook going to take business in the next three years? And, are the companies in your area prepared for that?
You can run a local ad saying, "Hey, I'm booking nine meetings" or, "Six meetings and this is a local tour that we're doing and it's a $3000 event and I'll do it for free, and I'll come to your office, but here's the deal. Number one, the owner has to be there, and then number two, you have to give me X amount of time," or something like that.
You put some stipulations on it, but if you can get in front of them, your chances are going to go tremendously. Utilizing the web system and the web tools and the web automation that you guys have set up, and I really like Russell's two step follow-up process that you guys use. I believe for like high ticket sales and stuff.
We use a very similar approach. I would say a lot of the times it's one person versus two, but the psychology's actually exactly the same as a two step, so that might help people when they get on the phone with somebody, knowing what to do and where to take it next, but yeah.
Steve Larsen:
That's amazing. That's really cool. I mean, we're always ... Go ahead.
James Smiley:
I've done this with as big as companies that are in the government all the way down to when I ... I think I was one of Dan Henry's first 50 or 60 students.
Steve Larsen:
Sure.
James Smiley:
When I buy even a course like that, I'll just go implement it right away. I want to know, I want to know everything in the first 10 days or so, so I went out and booked a ton of small appointments and went out there and did it. The same process works whether you're going after a chiropractor or whether you're going after a Fortune 2000 or somebody in the government.
Steve Larsen:
That's amazing. Because this kind of approach, I mean, the core of what we usually teach is usually, "Hey, let's do a free plus shipping offer. Here's this little $7 thing." That's not really the same approach you're going to use when you go to B2B, but the same principles certainly apply of sales.
This is cool...
I've never seen this before, that's awesome. I want to ask more about you personally, right after this too, but you're saying funnel wise ... Go ahead.
James Smiley:
You're right. Like, the psychology is the same, which is when I read the DotCom Secrets book, I was like, "This is right on." Even in my industry, I was like, "I don't know if you guys fully understand like how big it is in my industry." I mean, it's huge.
Steve Larsen:
It's massive, dude. I read it when I was laying out, holding my M16 out there and I was reading this thing and I was like, "This is changing everything" and all these startups were like, "Shut up Larsen." I was like, "No, I don't think you get it. This book's amazing." Sorry. Just a little testimonial there.
James Smiley:
And I would say the comprehensiveness of that, I mean it's just scripted out for you. It's the most complete book I've ever seen on this kind of stuff. The other thing I was going to inject, too, Steve, is a lot of people say, "Okay, I can get that meeting. What do I sell them? What do companies want? What are the sweet spots?" I'll share some of the things that we're doing and seen a lot of success with, so we're seeing a lot of success with companies that are five million to about 15 million.
Steve Larsen:
That's the sweet spot for you, right? With this funnel.
James Smiley:
It's a sweet spot that it's almost downmarket from where I usually play. I usually play in the 10 to 100 million dollar client range, but I've found the ease of getting into clients that are between five and 15 million is unbelievable. If you look at how many businesses in the last three to five years have gotten into that four, five, six, seven million dollar range, it's astronomical.
The small and medium sized business has exploded and so most of these owners have gotten there because of some innovation, some relationship they built, some partnerships, some new technology or new industry that came out, and they almost, when you get with them, they almost don't fully understand how they got there. But they're just happy they did, right? Which anybody would be, and so-
Steve Larsen:
So like the people that have like, they've figured out enough stuff to get that far but they're ... That's kind of an interesting filter, though, as far as cool clients to have. That's interesting.
James Smiley:
Yeah. The beauty of these people, these companies, is number one they have money. Number two, they reach a plateau where their main goal of the executive staff, the CFO, these people, is they're just trying to maintain revenue and herd the cats.
Steve Larsen:
Sure.
James Smiley:
They don't want revenue drop off, right? I mean, it's a generalization, but I can tell you through Gartner and Forrester and all these market research firms that I've been fortunate enough to see what the data is, these companies that are in this small and medium sized world, they have no real focus on sales anymore because they're just trying to maintain the revenue that they just ramped up in the last one to five years.
Steve Larsen:
Interesting.
James Smiley:
So you come in, right? Or any of your followers who have an agency or whatever, and the great questions to ask them is, "How does your pipeline look? How does your sales funnel look? What's your cost per acquisition? What's your cost per lead?" It's astonishing. I would say over 9 out of 10, almost 95% of the time they will not know how to answer that.
Steve Larsen:
Wow.
James Smiley:
You talk to a 10 million dollar company, they don't know what their cost to acquire a customer is, what their cost per lead is.
Steve Larsen:
Wow. Truly is an accident then, which makes you the hero. That's awesome.
James Smiley:
Yeah, so you come in with that angle and then it's funny, like the main thing we lead with is funnels, right? It's the main thing we lead in. We say, "Are you getting leads online? Are you using online automation? Are you using social media?" 9 out of 10 times, maybe more than that, they're going to say, "No, not really but we've heard about it" or, "We're thinking it."
Steve Larsen:
"We posted on Facebook once. We have a page we don't do anything with."
James Smiley:
Yeah, like one of my clients is a big company in California. They're a top tech company, and they were telling me that when I asked them these questions they said, "Well, we have a marketing agency that did our website and then a year ago they said, 'Hey, do you want us to run Facebook ads?'" This is very typical, right? Marketing company-
Steve Larsen:
Sure.
James Smiley:
... they know branding, they don't really know leads, sales, or want to be responsible or on the hook for sales, but they know branding, they know the four Ps of marketing, all that stuff, right?
Steve Larsen:
Yeah.
James Smiley:
They watch an Etsy video or YouTube, or took a class, and now they're Facebook ad experts. Here I come into a client, they're spending 5 to $6000 a month on Facebook ads, and all the agency is doing is boosting their posts.
Steve Larsen:
Like, with no other strategy.
James Smiley:
I could not believe that. I was like, "You're paying this company thousands of dollars, plus you're earning five grand of your own money, and all they're doing is boosting your post? That's not even an ad. That's not like a real ad."
Steve Larsen:
No. I could do that, and I don't even know Facebook very well. That's easy.
James Smiley:
Yeah. They had done this full fledge for about three months.
Steve Larsen:
Wow.
James Smiley:
They ramped into it and then they said, "We're all in, five grand a month." I said, "How many sales have you ever made in those three months?" They said, "Zero." I said, "So you've spent over $15,000 in ads and you don't have one trackable sale?" He said, "Yeah." He said, "Can you help us with that?" It's like, once you get in the door, you'd be surprised how many of these big companies are disorganized in that area and they're looking for somebody to help them.
Steve Larsen:
That's so cool. That's so cool. I mean, right before this we were chatting, and you were talking about, "Hey." I mean, there's this process you go through while you're with them. Do you mind taking us through that, like the outline you have in your head?
James Smiley:
Yeah. One of the things that I'll train people on is when you're in a meeting, when you get face to face with somebody, there's really three things that you need to know before you close, okay? Here's one thing about closing is if a sale is moving too fast and it's a big sale, something is drastically wrong, okay?
Steve Larsen:
Which is such the opposite thing you want to know and here.
James Smiley:
It's almost like the opposite of true internet marketing, where it's like you want speed, you want traction, right? With these big companies, very few times does one person make the decision. Nobody really wants to be on the hook if there's a downside, but everybody wants to wave the flag if there's an upside. When you're coming in, you have to understand that there's going to be ... B2B is more of a chess match and you have to understand how the chess match is played and why people want you in there.
Believe it or not, the bigger the company, it's not always about revenue and it's not always about sales...
It's usually about the bigger the company, and I'm just saying this so people understand, that most of the time the motivation, the influential factor is going to be somebody wants a promotion, somebody wants to look good, something like that.
Steve Larsen:
Just to follow-up with that real quick, what's your strategy to make sure you're actually pitching the decision maker, you know what I mean? Because otherwise, I could see you literally pitching everybody, you know what I mean?
James Smiley:
Yeah. One of the things that I do when we're warming up leads and booking meetings is so number one, we're trying to get a face to face meeting. Number two, if we're going to do an onsite seminar or something like that, we require the business, the decision maker to be there, or we'll say, "Or we'll charge you."
Steve Larsen:
Interesting.
James Smiley:
The decision maker has to be there or we'll send you an invoice, and they have to stay the whole time. If you don't set those parameters, 80% of the time you're going to get some marketing manager who's just basically stealing your ideas and going to go tell the boss that now they're smarter. You've got to get the decision maker there when you're presenting and being the guru.
Steve Larsen:
And you're presenting in their office, with them, as like a roadshow, part of your funnel basically?
James Smiley:
Yeah, that's been a big thing that we've done the past five, six, seven years. I've done it at a number of different companies, big companies, small startups, all those kind of things, and for my own agency, and it's worked really well. If you can't get into meetings, the next best thing, something that and I'll just throw this out there for your audience as well, just like a backend hack that we're using, is something that works really, really well is to set up your own Meetup.com or network with somebody who runs a Meetup.com.
Say, "Hey, I'm an XYZ expert." "I'm a Facebook ad expert," "I'm an online automation expert," and say, "I do this seminar and we've done it, the value of it is thousands of dollars, but I'll do it for your people for free if you can get 10 people or 20 people in the room."
Then, so you can use Facebook, you can use all the little event invites apps to get people there. You can use Meetup.com. For a while, we ran our own Meetup.com here when we we're just getting established in Dallas. Here's the thing about B2B that's different, is you only need like one or two or three really good people in the room to make a six figure income.
Steve Larsen:
Yeah. That's ... Wow, yeah.
James Smiley:
Yeah. One of the most profitable meetings in the past, or really this year that I did, was with one person. This person was a big business owner, big time networker, multimillionaire, and it was just to him, and I talked to him and wrote all over his whiteboard for an hour and a half, and then he referred me to my biggest client this year, which I mean, getting a five and six figure deal is pretty common in the B2B space.
Steve Larsen:
Sure, which is just crazy for so many people who are just starting this game. Like, that blows their mind. "One deal, six figures, what?" But that's the kind of stuff that you kept dropping on my Voxer and I was like, "Who is this guy?"
James Smiley:
Yeah. Really, some of the people that I've been helping is the ideal scenario for somebody like me, is to go there, win that relationship, keep up the corporate relations, and broker out the services on the backend to people. I've got a network of trusted people.
If I need email copy, if I need funnels, if I need Facebook ads, you know what I mean?...
That's an ideal scenario for somebody like me. I would say when you start out, try to do as much as you can so you learn the process inside and out, but it's amazing how much money you can make versus how much time you put in.
I always have people say, they're like, "James, you have four kids, married for 13 years, great marriage, you seem like you" ... I used to be a pro fisherman, pro bass fisherman, so I fish a lot, I have all these fishing pictures, I run an info product for fishing.
Steve Larsen:
Wow.
James Smiley:
They're like, "How do you do all this stuff? You have this huge business, and you're speaking at these conferences and stuff." I'm like, it's the B2B space that I play in where I only need less than a handful of clients at a time, and they're going to more than take care of me.
I would say something that's really important and I don't want to be one of those people to paint a false reality here. You've got to know how to fire your own client when you're in this game.
Steve Larsen:
Do you do it a lot?
James Smiley:
I would say I turn down about 50% of the people who say they want to work with me.
Steve Larsen:
That makes me feel better because I fire a lot of people. Fire your own customer, yeah, okay.
James Smiley:
Yeah, it might even be more. Whereas, if I feel like I'm going to get into something and as soon as something goes wrong they're going to blame me, like it could be anything, something in marketing, revenue, CFO doesn't ... Whatever. I'm out of there, you know?
Steve Larsen:
Totally, yeah. There was a guy, like just recently, and he ran up to me and he's like, "Hey."
He's offering me 50-100 grand for me to build a funnel and I was like, "Hey, that's really cool" and it was like a drop in the hat, really easy one that I knew it'd like double sales and all this stuff, but it was simply because ... I said no to him just because I didn't think we'd get along. That sounds ludicrous to people but I don't want to get into this relationship with someone where it's like just hell the whole way, you know?
James Smiley:
Yeah.
Steve Larsen:
It's like, "Oh." Yeah, anyway.
James Smiley:
Yeah. I mean-
Steve Larsen:
The key is firing more than hiring almost, you know? Just be really picky with those high end ones. That's the biggest thing, [inaudible 00:23:48].
James Smiley:
Yeah. Something to piggyback off that, Steve, is you want to make sure you're set up as a corporate entity, a minimum of an LLC. Because you're dealing with big clients and they have lawyers, so-
Steve Larsen:
Got you.
James Smiley:
I mean, I've been able to navigate the waters and stay out of any of that, but this is not like working with a three-man show down at the local strip mall area, you know what I mean?
Steve Larsen:
Sure, yeah.
James Smiley:
If something goes wrong, the CFO's not going to take the heat. He's going to shift it to somebody else, and so you just need to be prepared for that.
Make sure that you don't get into those type of relationships on the frontend, that's the best thing you can do to protect yourself.
Steve Larsen:
Right, that's interesting. I mean, when you first got started doing this, I'm sure you had your own legal documents and all this stuff. I mean, did you spend a lot ... Probably more time obviously than the average person, just setting up the legal aspects of it?
James Smiley:
Yeah. I hired a coach to make sure I did everything right.
Steve Larsen:
Oh, cool.
James Smiley:
I'm big into coaching, have always been, and so yeah, I hired somebody just to make sure that I had all that buttoned up. It's not as complicated as I thought, but I'd rather be safe than sorry on that end.
Steve Larsen:
Sure.
James Smiley:
A lot of these companies, they're legacy business models and legacy leadership styles. They're not going to be all about handshake deals a lot, so you're going to need decent contracts and things like that. Out clauses. You don't ever want to get stuck to where you can't get out. You always want there to be a way for you to step out without any repercussion. That's a big thing, yeah.
Steve Larsen:
You've gone through and you ... I mean, you showed me how you got the leads. Totally genius funnel, and Meetup.com, ah, I wonder why I've never thought of that before. Like, people go to those.
James Smiley:
crosstalk...
Steve Larsen:
Like, that's such a, that's perfect for that industry. Anyway.
James Smiley:
Yeah. We've ran them, like digital marketing ones, like 5-10 people would show up the first meeting. We ran technology ones, you'll get a ton of people. Meetup.com, there's people there. Once you schedule that, you can rally all your social media channels and get more people there, but yeah, I mean we've ... Let me give people a hack on how where to have this meeting, right?
You don't want to have it home or something, and you may not have a place of business. The best places I've found is number one, a really nice local library.
Steve Larsen:
Really?
James Smiley:
Yeah. Like, I'm here in Frisco, Texas, just a local library. There's a great meeting space, projectors, all that stuff, and it's free. As long as you're a card carrying member of the library.
Steve Larsen:
Which takes like five seconds.
James Smiley:
That's right.
Steve Larsen:
Yeah...
James Smiley:
It's funny, this lady actually asked me, "Are you a card carrying member?" I'm like, "Um, that sounds like a little bit more than" ... A card carrying member of the library.
Steve Larsen:
"Where's the bouncer?"
James Smiley:
The other really cool place is the Microsoft stores, if you have a Microsoft store in your town or city. They usually have a business center that's attached to it, and you can go in there, and as long as you're not ... I hate to say this, but as long as you're not bringing an Apple computer, and a Windows computer, there are hookups and everything, and just-
Steve Larsen:
Wow.
James Smiley:
... A really cool free innovative space. You just call down there and say, "Hey, I want to book a business meeting." They love it because a bunch of business executives are going to come and be around their technology, so they'll let you come in for free. That's two easy places to have it. The third one is I'll ask somebody, a company, if they want to sponsor the location.
That actually works really well, because you'll usually have somebody who wants to show off or maybe wants to create opportunity for themselves, so they'll host it in their own building.
Steve Larsen:
Wow.
James Smiley:
That's the third way we've done it and it works out really well.
Steve Larsen:
Do you end up selling a lot of times the sponsor on your services? I can imagine that they'd get interested, too. That's [crosstalk 00:28:07].
James Smiley:
We will sell everybody in the meeting. We'll sell to everybody, yeah.
Steve Larsen:
Do you mind going into how you run the meeting itself? Like, what do you do in there? "Hey guys, want to build a funnel?"
James Smiley:
Yeah. Surprisingly when I first downloaded Webinar Secrets and all these online methodologies, it's actually very similar.
Steve Larsen:
I thought so. I was wondering if it was ... Okay, yeah. Nevermind, go on.
James Smiley:
Yeah. That's why the more that I've unraveled all the things that you guys are putting out, number one I've personally spent over $10,000 on your guys' stuff. I mean, Steal Your Funnel, Let The Show, everything. Your guys' stuff has been rock solid and I actually consume it, right?
Steve Larsen:
Sure.
James Smiley:
As I've been consuming it, I'm like, "This is so unbelievably productive in my area." Like, you could actually take the content of some of these things and just say, "Hey, B2B, fill your funnel. B2B, sales presentations." It would open up the doors tremendously.
Steve Larsen:
That's all I did in that first info product, actually. I was in college, I read DotCom Secrets, I was obsessed with it, and I held a three hour meeting in a stranger's home with tons of people and I recorded it. It was the same content. They were like, "Brilliant."
James Smiley:
Yeah. It's amazing, like one of the biggest things that people are going to need when they're starting out is they're going to need credibility. Usually people will give you a shot, you can set up one of these meetings in a couple weeks, and actually have it.
Like, in 10 days from now you can have your first meeting and have people there. But you're going to want to make sure you record it, the audio. You can go onto Amazon.com, there's a $20 Bouyer microphone that has a 20 foot extension. You can lapel it up onto yourself, so you can record what you're doing.
Number two, you want to get somebody to take some photos so you have photos. All those kind of things help you build credibility, so as you continue to move forward, you can use those photos, use the recording, all those things as promotional items and those kind of things.
Steve Larsen:
Interesting.
James Smiley:
Yeah, and then once you get into the meeting, the general structure is in the very beginning I will absolutely try to wow with something big. Like, the biggest headline I can come up with, and so in my career, I was able to grow two zero to 20 million dollar businesses, new lines of business, like from nothing to over 20 million.
Steve Larsen:
Oh, my gosh.
James Smiley:
And I did two of those before I was 35.
Steve Larsen:
Holy crap.
James Smiley:
Yeah, so that's usually the line I'll start out with. I'll say, "I'm going to tell you the 
backend secrets of how I grew two zero to 20 million dollar businesses for two different companies, and how I did it before I was 35, and maybe some of that will be helpful for you guys. Would you guys be onboard if I shared that with you?"
Steve Larsen:
what...
James Smiley:
Yeah, exactly.
Steve Larsen:
Cool.
James Smiley:
That shocks them, and then you go into like the three step process you use is awesome. Then, on the backend, the biggest thing you want to do is push them to one on one meeting. Like, you'll get people just the hot leads are going to walk right up to you, but try to push everybody to a meeting. If you can get 10 people or let's say you only get five people in the room, if you can book half of those people and then close one of them, that could be easily a five figure deal, easily a five figure deal.
Steve Larsen:
Interesting.
James Smiley:
So, yeah, I mean and that's just with five, you know?
Steve Larsen:
Right.
James Smiley:
But it's surprising. When you think of psychology of what we're doing, the more I read the stuff you guys put out, I'm like, "Wow, this just crystallizes what we've been working on." Like, it streamlined everything we've been doing.
Steve Larsen:
That's cool.
James Smiley:
Yeah, it's been really cool.
Steve Larsen:
You just barely touched on, so you go through, use some of the Perfect Webinar script which we ... Russell's always mentioned he regrets that he called it that because it's used way more places than just a webinar.
Then, you're trying to push to a one on one with them which is awesome, booking and closing them. The one part that you kind of mentioned before the call, so I'm like biting at the bit to try ... I want to hear about also, because every single one that you ever talked about with me was like these huge deals with these very well known companies.
I'm just not sure if I'm allowed to say the names so I'm not, but like, "Whoa, that's crazy." How do you structure a five and six figure kind of deal?
James Smiley:
Yeah, good question. I'll just reveal what we do and hopefully that helps your audience. The three things that mentally in my head, when I get to a one on one meeting, whether that's a phone call, but ideally it's face to face, is I'm looking for is there a need? Like, do they really have a need for my results? I'm pushing results, what I've done, and here's a simple hack I've taught new sales reps.
I mean, I had a sales rep come in who was a used car salesman, and at AT&T he ended up being one of the top salesmen in the entire country among 10,000 sales reps and he was a used car salesman.
I've taught them this strategy of if you don't have a true result, just Google a result in that industry for that type of service or technology. There's stories out there, there's blogs, there's videos, and you want to be able to share some type of result. Like, "People who used this, this is the type of result they're getting."
Like if you can't honestly say, "My clients are doing this," or, "Your competitor who works with me is doing this," then at least share something in the industry. It will help you move the conversation forward.
You need them to anchor on a result, and I will keep going back to, "So is that the kind of result that you guys want in your business?" Or, somehow I might say, "What would it do for you guys? I mean, I know you guys have a lot going on, but what it would do if you were able to get that kind of result?
Do you actually think you could handle that amount of leads or would I absolutely swamp you?" Once I can get them to anchor on a result, I'm trying to see like is there really a need with that, right?
Once I've established that, and a lot of times if I don't understand it, I will just ask them. I'll say, "Do you actually need this or do you just think it's cool? Like, do you need that result? Will it actually help your business?"
Stakeholder, board members, VC angel investors, will those guys care or how big is this, right? Number one is need. Number two ... Go ahead.
Steve Larsen:
Yeah, I just wanted to touch on that. Because that's actually a very stark difference between what we do and sounds like B2B funnels. We always tell people what they want. If we try and sell people what they need, most of the time you don't make a lot of money with B2C, you know? In that category. That's interesting.
You specifically go for the ... That makes sense, too. These big companies, they've got a bunch of cash, they're trying to figure out how to plug the holes in. That's probably their mindset anyway, that's fascinating. That's a big difference.
James Smiley:
Yeah no, that's a very good point. I would say one of the things that I've seen a contrast between what the internet marketing world as I understood it and consumed it to be, and B2B, is in B2B there's not as much emotional decisions. People who make emotional decisions do not stay in executive leadership very long. It's like the bigger a company gets, the less agile they get, right?
Steve Larsen:
Sure.
James Smiley:
I ran innovation at AT&T, I did some stuff with Facebook. When you deal with these bigger companies they'll talk about ... I ran an innovation center, but I would always say, "What are we innovating?" You know?
Steve Larsen:
Sure.
James Smiley:
Because when you're a big company, you can't make as many mistakes because when you make a mistake, that could tank your stock price three bucks, which is billions of dollars.
Steve Larsen:
Interesting. They're all walking on eggshells all the time, that's interesting.
James Smiley:
Yeah, so people want sign off, approvals, and all those kind of things, and so it's important to have someone inside the business, ideally the key decision maker, the owner, who's your champion. Very key to have a champion, someone who's willing to champion it internally, in the business, but I would not try to push to one call closes and those kind of things as much, because a lot of times there are influential factors.
Like, if a CEO makes a decision and he spends money on you but then this other part of the business is going under, somebody, like the CFO, the board, whatever, could say, "Well, why did you shift money there versus over on this side?"
There's a lot of factors that take place, and so, although I am absolutely pushing them to make an emotional decision, so I'm actually trying to push on that want feeling more, but I'm presenting it more as a need is maybe the way I would say that.
Steve Larsen:
Oh, that's clever. I love that.
James Smiley:
Number one need, the next thing I'll go to in the meeting is I will ask them directly, "Perfect. I mean, that's cool. I know we can do it. You've got the right person" type of thing, and then I'll say, "So what's your timeline to get this done? When would it be good for you to get this done? When do you want it done?"
Once again, if a sale is moving too fast and they're just skipping over this stuff, something's going to fall on the backend, and you're not going to close the sale. You need to establish a need and get common agreement there. Then, you need to establish and get common agreement on a timeline. They may say, "I need all these results in two weeks." You're running LinkedIn or Facebook ads or whatever and you go, "That ain't happening."
So, you need to understand the timeline, and that's going to set expectations, right? If you can agreement there, the next question I'll ask is the most important, which is about the money. I'll say, "So, you want these results, we've already talked about how you think you can generate $8000 a month more or $8000 a week more," whatever.
Steve Larsen:
Wow.
James Smiley:
"What's your budget to be able to" ... "What are you willing to invest to be able to do that?" I'll tell you, like 90% of the time, somebody's not going to come back and say, "I have $200,000 free cash flow." But you will find out with that question if they don't have a budget. I mean, most of the time, you're going to find out if they don't and that's key, right? Like, if somebody comes back to me and says, "I can probably carve out like 6 to $8000 this year for you," that's not my client, you know?
Steve Larsen:
Sure.
James Smiley:
Although it could be a great relationship for a lot of people, it's not my client.
Steve Larsen:
If they don't have a budget, do you walk then?
James Smiley:
Yes.
Steve Larsen:
That's awesome.
James Smiley:
Yep. I've got a playbook that I'll usually leave with them that during the meeting, I'm kind of like writing a few notes, a few ideas. I'm wowing them with the type of results and if they start asking you, they might start asking you details about, "Well, why are you an expert at this?"
I might go into different ways to create audiences and as I'm telling them hacks and things like that, I'll be writing those down. Then, I end up leaving that behind with them, so it's something nice that we leave behind. But typically, the only three things that I need to know is is there a need? Is there a timeline? Is there a budget?
That goes for whether I'm working with somebody in the government, so whether I'm working with a Fortune 10 or a new startup or an individual.
Steve Larsen:
That's amazing. That's amazing. Holy crap. That's really cool. It's neat to see how you pulling off on their ... I mean, I always tell people, "The customer's not always right, the customer's not always right." Whoever said that phrase was just totally wrong and not in business, or read about it in a book or something. It's call to see you sifting and sorting out people like that.
James Smiley:
Yeah, and there for time, I know we're going to be cutting close here, do you want me to share how to structure the price tag?
Steve Larsen:
That would be awesome, actually. That's a big question I've got for it, as well, yeah.
James Smiley:
Yeah, so I've learned this over the years. When I was in my 20s, I would always screw this up. When I got in my late 20s, early 30s, I just started figuring out, now I feel like I've really crystallized this, so what you want to do, especially if you're an individual consultant or running a small agency, is number one, you're going to probably laugh at how similar this is to what you guys do.
It's actually the same exact psychology, just a little bit different on how you present it. But the first thing I do is I'll say ... So, if I were working at such and such a company ... So, a live example would be when I was at AT&T, I was in what's called the "high-po" program, the high potential executives program, so I was on a fast track to be an executive in the company.
Essentially, around October of this year, I left a couple of years ago, but around October this year there was a high likelihood I would be at a VP or some type of executive or something like that, as long as I was progressing, right?
Steve Larsen:
Sure.
James Smiley:
So what I tell them is, that kind of a job ... So I left that and I say, "Now, that's a 300 to $500,000 a year job." That's kind of where I start, you know? It's really important that when you present that figure of what your true full value is, it's important that they believe it, okay? When I was younger, I used to just zoom by it and I was kind of embarrassed.
Like, if you can't anchor off of that, because that actually becomes your high price tag, where then you start doing a price drop, right? Similar to what all these guys do, what you guys teach.
You want to anchor off of what's your absolute highest value, and be honest. If you're a $80,000 person, say you're 80. If you're a 100, say you're a 100. If you're 50, say you're 50, but so you anchor off that and then so in their mind they're going, "I want that result, but crap, I can't afford that."
Then, the next thing you bridge to is you say, "So not only am I at least a 3 to $500,000 employee, but you look at some of my competitors who offer this service," and trust me, there's always going to be someone who's more pricier than you, than me, right?
So you say, "Some of competitors and you may know these guys, this guy or this guy, they charge 400 to $600,000 for this service. In fact, just to have this meeting could be $2000." Now, they're going, "Dude, this was a great meeting but I don't have that kind of meeting," but they have to believe that you're worth it or that somebody would actually pay you for that, okay? If they don't believe-
Steve Larsen:
How are you doing that? Yeah, how are you anchoring that?
James Smiley:
You set it up in the very beginning. From when you come in, when somebody says ... I was meeting with, a sales meeting with Siemens' CO not that long ago and I don't know the guy. A partner of mine brought me in and he sits me in, I'm the youngest guy in the room and he looks me dead in the eye, shakes my hand with a big old smile, he says, "James, tell me something about yourself." Just right away, no introduction, "Tell me about" ... That's very common, right?
Steve Larsen:
Sure.
James Smiley:
The last thing you want to do is go through your resume. They're not actually asking you, "Tell me your resume." The thing you want to say is what are your results. What are the things you've done that are huge, the big headlines. That's where, instead of saying, "Well, when I first got into technology," you're losing the sale already.
The first thing you want to say, "Well, what's really cool is I sold this deal and had this partnership and I've been able to help these logos, and I've been in this publication, or I have a book." You want to almost give your sales pitch, like your value proposition to the world, you know? Like what are your big headlines? In the very beginning they're going, "Wow, this person's pretty high level. This person is much more high level than our marketing managers."
Steve Larsen:
That's interesting. You're not necessarily telling the origin story, but you're telling ... You're in the testimonial phase of what you've done. Okay. I'm just putting it in my head where you're going, okay.
James Smiley:
Yes. The only thing I teach people to talk about, I've told hundreds of sales reps this, the only thing you want to share is your results. You want to share what you've done, who've you've helped, what their ROI was. Don't talk about, "I've been in the industry for 22 years."
No one cares about that stuff because most people have been in the industry for XX amount of years.
Steve Larsen:
Sure, especially if the CEO, if they're like, "Yeah, I've been here forever."
James Smiley:
Yeah, yeah. That's not impressive and I would say the same thing in terms of how you fill out your LinkedIn. If you're not established in the industry, don't make your LinkedIn a resume. Make your LinkedIn from top to bottom, all about results. You'll see a significant difference in the type of people that want to engage with you, and so yeah, do you want me to come back to the price tag thing?
Steve Larsen:
Oh heck yeah, yeah. This is awesome. I'm just trying to keep you going. I don't want to turn it off. This is awesome.
James Smiley:
Yeah, this is fun. I'm going to anchor on a super high price tag that I'm worth as a full time employee, working at a corporation, working 40 to 60 hours a week, whatever that is, and then I'll bridge it to, "Okay, this is what my competitors are worth and this is what they charge you, and hey, you might even talk to one of these guys, right?" A lot of times they're like, "Yeah, I've heard about them and man, this is way too pricey."
Then, I'll start to back it into typically, I would charge $150,000 for something like this. When I present that, I'm saying, I start off with, "In order for me to drive 1.2 million dollars of new sales revenue" or whatever that is, right?
I actually try not to lean as much on revenue. I'll lean more towards a different metric. I'll try to anchor on a different metric like, "In order for me to double your leads, in order for me to 4X your leads, or in order for me to take your cost per lead to this number," right? I'll try to stay off of the revenue number now. I learned that when I was really young.
I used to just talk about revenue, but it's better to talk about something slightly different, something that's a little bit more easily measurable for something that I can deliver.
Then so I'll say, "In order for me to do this, you think about the impact and what that could do to your revenue, how it could double, triple your revenue, how it could make you" ... I won't say this directly but essentially I'll hit on something like, "How it could make you look better to your boss, to your board, how much more money you can get from your VCs," right? I'll hit on that.
Then, I'll say, "In order for me to do that, it's a deal at $150,000." Now, I've established like, "Okay, there's a price tag," and now they're like, "Oh crap." The very next thing I step into, and you have to snap to this quick is, "The only thing we need to know together here is do you want this result?
I f you want that, I can always find a way to help you pay for it." Once you say that line, now they're like, "Oh cool. Awesome." They're with you, right? Now they're like, "Okay, help me pay for this." That's where you can break it into different structures, where you can do ... If I can, I'll try to do half up front and then take the rest and divide it over six months or 10 months or whatever you want to do.
Make sure you have a good contract there, so if they cancel, there's a ... We try to do a 60 day out, so if they want to cancel today, they still have to pay two more months, so we'll include a lot of those clauses in there. They can't just drop us on a dime.
We tell them, "Look, you're a big company." Every partnership will end at some point, every one. You're never linked at the hip with a company forever, so the contracts are set up to help you make sure that when those departures happen that everyone's on the same page.
What I'll say is, "You don't want me just to leave and all your ads are running and all this stuff, right? The clause is something that makes it a smooth transition for both of us, to make sure that you're covered, that you guys have exposure, those kind of things, added risk, just because maybe I find a better client."
I wouldn't say it like that, but you know, whatever...
Yeah, and then a lot of people will ask you in the contracting process about, they'll say, "Well, I don't know if I want a commitment. I want it month to month. Do you do month to month?" I will say this, I'll say, "I don't and here's why. One is if there's no commitment, I can drop you like a dime because there's a lot of you. There's only one of me, but there's a lot of you, so you have to-
Steve Larsen:
Great line.
James Smiley:
Yeah. So, I may not say that directly, but I'm just trying to be quick here. I'm going to turn the table there and say, "Do you just want me to leave?" That's where they're usually like, "Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, yeah. We want some type of commitment. We don't want you to just run off to our competitors," right?
Steve Larsen:
Yeah.
James Smiley:
So yeah, that's something I'll do in the contracting process as well, is try to make sure that I'm not just going to get left out in the cold, protecting myself, protecting my revenues so it's more predictable. Most companies are not just going to drop it all upfront unless they're more government related, those kind of things, or if you're backing up on their fiscal year they might just drop some cash like that. But yeah, I mean, most of the time they're going to want some type of structure and so the best is to do half upfront if you can.
It's very typical in contracts to see that.
The next best would be make them pay some balloon payment upfront, and say, "Guys, you guys know, to set this up, it's a thousand times harder to set it up than to maintain it three months later, so I need to make sure I'm not running on a negative." I always say things, when it comes down to cost, the big thing you want to inject is, "As you can imagine, I've got a million people. I can go down to all your competitors, they would all want to work with me on this. I just need to make sure that I'm paid so that this keeps my attention, so my attention's on it." That's actually true.
Steve Larsen:
It is, 100%, yeah.
James Smiley:
It's so true, yeah. Like, when you're getting paid $500 or $1000 a month, you're like, "$1000, I'm trying to get to 12,000," it's so small, right?
Steve Larsen:
Yeah, it is small.
James Smiley:
But if somebody's paying you 5000 or 12,000, it's a much bigger deal, right? That's one thing that I'll try to inject, is you're paying to make sure that my attention stays on it. I'll inject that.
Another thing, if I'm having problems closing or adjusting price is I will bring up that what you're really getting here, I'll talk about corporate positions, "Is you're getting a marketing manager, you're getting online strategic digital marketing VP, and you're getting a salesperson. Think about if you were to hire those people. Like, just the hiring process would cost you five figures or more, multi five figures, just to hire them," you know?
Steve Larsen:
Sure, sure.
James Smiley:
Then you're like, "Then you've got to maintain them, then you've got all the different things that come in with employees." Then I'll even throw it out. I'll say, "Look, if you want me to find you those three people, I know three really good ones. I can help you bring them on."
They're looking at that price tag going, "Forget that."
Those are some of the things that I do to try to work on price justification but if you can get down to selling them on the result and then you've set them at ease and say, "Look, my only job now is to help you. Let's work together to figure out how to pay for it, right?" They're like, "Yeah, let's have that discussion."
Steve Larsen:
That is so cool, because then you're not standing in there being the bad guy. Instead of standing forward face to face with them, now you're standing side by side. Oh, my gosh, that's awesome. That's cool.
James Smiley:
Yeah. It works.
Steve Larsen:
I mean obviously you're selling throughout. The sale's never going to end, even after you've made the end, the sale continues obviously, but when do you know that you have them?
James Smiley:
I know I have them when ... That's a great question. To me, I've learned it's more of a gut feel over time. I just get this gut feel like, "This one's going to work" but I think the reality of that is when I've got the decision maker, I've got agreement on time, on need, time, and budget, and the person is like anchoring with me on all the big anchors.
The result, my value, my ultimate value. Like, when they're anchoring on those two things and they're sold on it, they're like ...
I'm trying to close a $150,000 deal right now, and I've had the CEO tell me multiple times, because I'll throw it out there, I'll say, call him on his cellphone, "Hey man, are we going to sign it?" He's like, "Well," he's like, "Man," he's like, "Yeah, I need to get this done. We need to get this done." I'll say, "The other option, man, honestly, you can hire me out right. I will entertain that. If you want to bring that kind of contract forward."
The first thing they do is go, "Dude, I can't afford that." I'm giving them a bargain, right?
Steve Larsen:
Sure, sure.
James Smiley:
Yeah, so when I know I've got them there, I've got them. The last thing I'll say is, it's a fine line between ... You want to keep pushing, you want to make them commit to, "Okay, cool, why don't you think about it and let's set up a meeting for Friday where we can finalize this?"
You want to give them an end date. That's where the scarcity and all those kind of things come into play, and I will absolutely, 80% of the time they're going to drag their feet. It just happens, right? People don't want to be on the hook for signing a 100,000 or a 200,000 or a $50,000 deal, and there's always a level of unknown any time you sign a deal.
It doesn't matter how good you know, what kind of testimony someone has, there's a level of unknown. You're like, "I don't know. I mean, I hope the guy does what he says, but I don't know."
There's a level of risk that they're taking on, so that's why they drag their feet and it's important to ... Like, what's that saying in the seven highly habits? It's like, "7 Habits of Highly Effective People," it's like, "It's more important to understand than to be understood." The reason they're dragging their feed, you have to understand that. Most of the time it's because they don't want to be on the hook if something goes wrong.
Steve Larsen:
Which is why you set the positioning of being next to them, helping them pay for it. I'm assuming that helps like crazy.
James Smiley:
Yes. It's huge there and then also, as days go by, I'll say, "Hey man, as you know, we have marketing systems, automation out there, 24/7, 365. Just to let you know, I've got to move my business forward like you do every day, and so I've got some more leads in this area. I just want to know, how does it look? What's your level of confidence here that this is going to happen in the next week or two?"
Steve Larsen:
Oh, good question.
James Smiley:
You know what I mean?
Steve Larsen:
Yeah.
James Smiley:
That's a good gauging question, and so you need to inject, I just love when you guys talk about scarcity. Because I've been doing that my whole life but I've never called it that. It makes it so clear. Like, it's a word that you can always go to at the end of a sale.
Like, "What do I need to do to create some scarcity and some urgency in this guy's mind?" You know?
Steve Larsen:
Right. That's interesting. Scarcity without saying, "Hey, I'm so hard to get a hold of that we should jump into bed together," you know what I mean?
James Smiley:
Yeah. B2B, most people are going to see through that stuff. You need to be genuine, for sure, yeah.
Steve Larsen:
That makes sense. Man, oh, my gosh, I wish there was more time. I have to actually leave and actually go build, but I'm blown away. This is insane. This is so cool.
I've never had such a clear understanding of how someone actually pulls the funnels off in B2B. I've got another buddy who does them as well, but this is insane, though. You've gone through and just to recap, I always take notes every time I interview somebody, just because I learn so much, man. Especially, holy crap, this has been amazing.
So obviously you went through how to structure the five to six figure price point, the price tag, and the deal, with the needs, timeline and, "What's the budget for this?" And actually start getting the money there.
I love the process, the actual funnel itself. That's amazing...
Every time that we teach somebody, "Hey, if you want to start going," like right now, in Two Comma Club Coaching, there's been a few people who have asked, "Hey, can I sell a $10,000 price point off of a webinar?" Most of the time, we usually say no. Like, by that price tag, you need to start getting them out. You've got to change the selling environment.
You need to go and separate them from behind their computer and go get them somewhere. The fact that you say that first of all, the lead's coming through LinkedIn usually, then through some maybe auto-webinar, you're booking a call, and you're pushing them to an event where you're a traveling roadshow so, "Catch me because I'm leaving" kind of thing.
Oh, my gosh, that's so cool, because you're changing that selling environment. Anyway, I have so many notes that I'm putting notes on my notes in between lines, so I can't even decipher them all no the spot right now but I will very shortly. Man, this has been fantastic.
James Smiley:
Yeah. I mean, I appreciated being able to share with you guys.
Steve Larsen:
Where can people find out about you?
James Smiley:
Yeah, thanks for that. JamesSmiley.org is the main site to go to. We're going to be doing, there's just been so much demand in the past couple months. Really, I would say last three or four months. I had a big press release and just different things, and I've had a lot of people say, "How do I do that?" We're going to put something together to start coaching people and helping them get into this. I'm really into personalization which is kind of my style, so I'm not going to do a traditional, "Hey," like most people would probably do it. Just, "Buy my online course" or something.
We're going to do it a little bit more personal, but because I think if you're going to get into this space, that's where your head needs to start going no matter what. We put together some resources at JamesSmiley.org/sales, and there's a playbook that we've put together. This is a playbook that I used when we IPO'd a company called TeleNav.
It was 350 million dollar a year revenue SaaS company. It was one of the most successful GPS technology companies out of Silicon Valley, but when I came in, I was the sixth employee and when I left there was like 400 employees. I ran sales from Los Angeles, all the way to the other side of the country, and so this kind of goes over how did we go about that process and how did we go about closing all those big deals and getting all those big partnerships done.
It's really become a playbook for people when they go into a meeting. It tells them how you talk through the price tag, how do you even start generating B2B leads, and another cool thing that we just went ahead and put in this playbook is there's a PowerPoint presentation that's a template. It's like 100 slides. We had a big market research firm put this thing together, and so whenever I need to make a pitch, I'll go in there and grab three or four slides, and the graphics and everything is amazing.
We actually paid $7000, we literally paid $7000 to have this thing made about two years ago.
I'm just going to give that away in this playbook so you'll know how to generate leads, you'll have a really slick way to do your presentations so you'll look super professional, just slap your own logo and your own feature function benefits, and your results in there, and we'll teach you the system of how to close. One of the biggest things that you guys need is credibility, and if you're not an author, what I'm going to do is I'll include in here as maybe like a bonus, is I'll co-author a book with you, which is very likely to be an Amazon Best Seller.
I've got a couple of those.
Steve Larsen:
Whoa.
James Smiley:
At least you'll be, you'll get the home study course, you'll get one on one time with me in the mastermind group, and then you'll also be a co-author of a best seller that you can use that as your business card, you know what I mean? Going into businesses-
Steve Larsen:
Wow.
James Smiley:
... saying, "Oh yeah, by the way, here's something I wrote on Facebook ads. Here's something I wrote on online automation," or whatever. I'm hoping that's just a killer value and people would sign up for that, so that's...
Steve Larsen:
Good. Awesome, man. That's huge.
James Smiley:
Yeah, so hopefully that adds a ton of value to people who are trying to figure this thing out. It's at JamesSmiley.org/sales. You know what's just funny is like my passion truly is to help people and especially entrepreneurs.
Like, that's where I came from, and one of the things that I started telling people last year when they started asking me about this is is, you know, I bet you when people first got into Facebook ads or they first got into whatever, that there was all this unknown, right?
Steve Larsen:
Right.
James Smiley:
But then a couple months later they're like, "I got this." That's the same thing here. I mean, once you get your first one or two down, you're going to feel like this is easy. The process becomes a lot easier.
Steve Larsen:
That's awesome. Well guys, thanks so much for listening, and thanks so much for James as well. The B2B expert, sales rep trainer, script writer, event thrower, sponsor getterer, pro bass fisherman.
James Smiley:
Woohoo.
Steve Larsen:
It's been amazing. I really appreciate it, and guys go to JamesSmiley.org/sales and get frankly, one of the coolest things anyone's ever given away on this show. Oh, my gosh, I'm going to go there right now and go opt-in as soon as we're done. Anyways, thanks so much man.
James Smiley:
Okay. Appreciate you guys, have a great day.
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