How Direct Response Marketers Can Launch Challenges to Increase Profits and Reduce Chaos

Summary

Podcast Summary: Special Ops Episode - "How Direct Response Marketers Can Launch Challenges to Increase Profits and Reduce Chaos"

Introduction

In the latest episode of the Special Ops Podcast, host Emma Rainville delves deep into the strategic use of challenges as a potent tool for direct response marketers aiming to boost profits and streamline operations. Joined by the seasoned marketing operations expert Mikhail Kutsnetsov, Emma explores the multifaceted approach to designing, launching, and managing challenges that not only attract high-ticket offers but also foster sustainable business growth. Released on April 15, 2025, this episode serves as an invaluable guide for entrepreneurs and e-commerce sellers looking to transform their businesses through actionable strategies.

Understanding the Applicability of Challenges

Mikhail begins by emphasizing the importance of assessing whether a challenge is suitable for a particular business model. He states:

“[01:42] Mikhail Kutsnetsov: The first component is making it clear for your business whether a challenge is even applicable... you have someone within the organization who’s really good live and able to make those meaningful connections.”

He underscores that live interaction is pivotal for the success of a challenge, recommending that businesses ensure they have competent individuals capable of engaging effectively with participants. Without this, other mechanisms may be more appropriate.

Strategizing the Conversion Mechanism

The duo discusses the critical aspect of converting challenge participants into high-ticket offer buyers. Mikhail advises:

“[02:36] Mikhail Kutsnetsov: What is the mechanism that you're going to use to convert them into that offer? Because you could do a one day challenge or you could do a three day challenge. I don't recommend a two day challenge.”

Emma adds her experience with five-day challenges, noting their success with specific offers. The consensus is that the structure and duration of the challenge play a significant role in conversion rates.

Pre-Launch Cadence and Team Synchronization

Mikhail introduces the concept of a "waterfall leading into the pre phase of the challenge," stressing the necessity of a well-coordinated pre-launch sequence:

“[03:43] Mikhail Kutsnetsov: You have to have your marketing team to have an early bird page... you don’t want to find yourself seven days before the challenge starts and all of a sudden nobody knows about it.”

Emma echoes this by highlighting the importance of timing in digital advertising algorithms:

“[04:12] Emma Rainville: The first 10 to 14 days is just warming the algorithm on Facebook... we want to go 21 days in advance as well.”

Their discussion highlights the need for both organic and paid marketing efforts to ramp up adequately before the challenge begins, ensuring maximum visibility and participant engagement.

Operational Synergies and Communication

A significant portion of the conversation revolves around the synergy between marketing, operations, and customer service teams. Mikhail introduces the idea of "pockets of genius":

“[06:36] Mikhail Kutsnetsov: Your customer support rep is a customer support rep for a reason... the person who’s posting on social media might see a feedback loop that’s really positive that they can then pass over to your ads person.”

Emma shares a personal anecdote:

“[05:06] Emma Rainville: Hear that? Communicating... we had a little bit of a challenge for us because we had not worked together before.”

They emphasize that seamless communication between teams prevents operational mishaps, such as misaligned marketing messages or unfulfilled promises, which can derail the entire challenge.

Pricing and Participant Segmentation

Emma and Mikhail delve into the intricacies of pricing challenges to attract the right participants. Mikhail suggests:

“[14:10] Mikhail Kutsnetsov: I recommend not running free unless you have a really dialed in system... You can go from $7 all the way up to $97.”

Emma highlights the importance of attracting both high-value customers and enthusiastic participants:

“[14:23] Emma Rainville: You always want to offer all of your challenges to them for free... you want to make affordable for them to get on there, because they’re creating the vibe.”

This dual approach ensures that while high-ticket buyers are attracted, there’s also a cohort of engaged participants who can enhance the challenge’s energy and overall success.

Crafting the Challenge Cadence

The episode provides a detailed breakdown of the challenge's timeline and daily activities. Mikhail outlines key operational steps:

“[13:19] Emma Rainville: Okay, so let's go first, though.

[13:21] Mikhail Kutsnetsov: Yep.”

Emma and Mikhail discuss the critical components of each day, from early bird sign-ups to the thank-you pages and follow-up communications. They stress the importance of maintaining participant enthusiasm and ensuring that all logistical elements are meticulously planned to avoid last-minute hiccups.

Sales Pipeline and Upsell Strategies

Mikhail introduces the concept of a robust sales pipeline that seamlessly integrates with the challenge. He explains:

“[31:17] Emma Rainville: Right. It's the money.

[31:18] Mikhail Kutsnetsov: So like, okay, you got people to apply, and so now you pitched, you got people opting in, they're booking calls. Everything's awesome.”

They emphasize the necessity of having a structured follow-up process to convert challenge participants into high-ticket buyers. Emma adds insights into effective sales techniques, such as building rapport and addressing specific pain points:

“[35:11] Mikhail Kutsnetsov: Your role is to control the chaos....”

“[35:30] Emma Rainville: You started with... You're taking notes on those.”

Managing Post-Challenge Interactions

Post-challenge strategies are crucial for sustaining momentum and maximizing conversions. Mikhail advises implementing a series of follow-up offers and maintaining engagement with participants:

“[39:03] Emma Rainville: You and I both know what each of those things mean. Let’s just explain each one.

[39:23] Mikhail Kutsnetsov: And this works absolutely fantastic because there are a lot of people in that audience that they can't afford 15k...”

Emma and Mikhail discuss innovative approaches like offering recurring subscriptions or downsell offers to retain participants who may not immediately convert to high-ticket purchases. This ensures that no leads are left untapped and that the business maintains a steady revenue stream.

Ensuring Operational Excellence

The episode underscores the importance of operational diligence in executing successful challenges. Mikhail highlights common pitfalls, such as misaligned pitch decks and last-minute changes by presenters:

“[26:22] Mikhail Kutsnetsov: It's a big no no.”

“[27:18] Emma Rainville: It never does. We have to scramble, but I'll let you continue.”

Emma reinforces the need for thorough pre-launch rehearsals and inter-team communication:

“[27:43] Emma Rainville: And the amount of times that marketing threw in a bonus and a challenge...”

“[28:11] Mikhail Kutsnetsov: ...three full days before the challenge, you get on a call with the marketing team, the ops team and the customer service team and you run through the pitch deck.”

These measures ensure that all team members are aligned, reducing the likelihood of errors that could compromise the challenge's success.

Notable Quotes

• Mikhail Kutsnetsov [06:36]: "Your customer support rep is a customer support rep for a reason... the person who’s posting on social media might see a feedback loop that’s really positive that they can then pass over to your ads person."

• Emma Rainville [14:23]: "You always want to offer all of your challenges to them for free... you want to make affordable for them to get on there, because they’re creating the vibe."

• Mikhail Kutsnetsov [30:15]: "Every great business has two roles. They have a chaos grader and they have a chaos controller."

Conclusion

Emma Rainville and Mikhail Kutsnetsov provide a comprehensive roadmap for direct response marketers looking to leverage challenges as a strategic tool for business growth. From meticulous pre-launch planning and team synchronization to innovative pricing models and robust sales pipelines, the episode encapsulates the essence of operational excellence intertwined with dynamic marketing strategies. By addressing both the macro and micro elements of launching challenges, listeners gain actionable insights that can be tailored to their unique business contexts. For those eager to implement these strategies, Emma invites them to download the Seven Figure Challenge Blueprint available for free at Special Ops Podcast. This episode is a must-listen for entrepreneurs committed to transforming their business operations and maximizing profitability through strategic challenges.

Connect with Mikhail Kutsnetsov

For more insights and content on marketing operations, follow Mikhail on Instagram @mvkbiz. Despite his playful online presence, Mikhail offers a treasure trove of information on copywriting, marketing, and AI-driven strategies.

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This summary captures the essence of the "Special Ops" podcast episode, highlighting key discussions, strategies, and expert insights shared by Emma Rainville and Mikhail Kutsnetsov. It is structured to provide a coherent and comprehensive overview for listeners and non-listeners alike.

Transcript

[Emma Rainville]

Welcome to another episode of Special Ops Podcast where we help visionary entrepreneurs and e commerce sellers with their profits, with their operations and everything in between. I'm Emma Rainville, your host and today I am joined by Mikhail Kutsnutsov. Mikhail and I have been friends for forever. Yeah, sure, forever. We've worked together, we've also hung out together, gone to some masterminds together, and today we're going to be talking about do you want to instantly add a traffic source to your high ticket offer? An influx of customers means an influx of profits. So today on Special Ops podcast, how direct response marketers can launch challenges to increase profits and reduce chaos. And Mikaela, I don't want to toot my own horn, but I feel like there is a better duo to be talking about marketing operations, specifically the challenges, than you and I. We've worked on several challenges together with multiple clients and we've been able to generate millions of dollars for people. So I want to jump right in and I want to talk about challenges for high ticket offers. Additionally, if you haven't subscribed, go ahead and subscribe. We have a website, www.specialopspodcast.com. you can sign up there for the Visionary Vault. We have tons of resources and courses and all kinds of stuff. And Mikaela and I are going to be throwing in a freebie today, the Seven Figure Challenge Blueprint. So if you find this podcast helpful, go ahead and head over there and download that. So, Mikhail, I'll let you take it away. Just walk me through a customer that you've worked with or a client that you've worked with that's like the perfect person for a challenge?

[Mikhail Kutsnetsov]

Yeah, absolutely. So the first component is making it clear for your business whether a challenge is even applicable. I think it's important to understand that because for some people, the thing with the challenge you have to understand is it's live, which means you're benefiting from the face to face, right? You're benefiting from that live interaction. And so you have to have someone within the organization, whether that's the person who's delivering or who's creating the products, who's really good live and able to make those meaningful connections with whoever they're speaking to. If you don't have that, I actually recommend some other mechanisms. But for today, I'm going to assume that you do have that. So if you do have that in place, then the first thing for you to think through is actually what is the mechanism of conversion into your offer? Let's say you have a 10k 15k, 25k offer. What is the mechanism that you're going to use to convert them into that offer? Because you could do a one day challenge or you could do a three day challenge. I don't recommend a two day challenge.

[Emma Rainville]

Right. You can also do a five day. We've had a lot of success with five days, but those are for specific offers we'll get into later.

[Mikhail Kutsnetsov]

You can do a five day. Correct. So take, you know, that specific client case study and several other ones that are can all be kind of templatized when you do a, let's say a seven figure challenge off one challenge. Right. So that's the blueprint that we're kind of looking at. There's some qualifiers that you from the upside absolutely have to have in place. And the first one is what I call the waterfall leading into the pre phase of the challenge. The way that that looks is number one, your actual core offer has to be really dialed in. You have to feel very congruent in understanding what avatar that offer is going to appeal to in who you're speaking to, because that's something that you're going to be able to translate to your marketing team so that your pre challenge cadence is sufficient. The number one mistake I see people make with challenges is their cadence leading into the challenge is either too short or actually too long. You want to have like a 21 day ish cadence that leads people in. Because if it's live, I don't know how you feel about it, but I have yet to sign up for a thing that's 60 days out, 90 days out.

[Emma Rainville]

I'm gonna figure out the week before is our best numbers. Right.

[Mikhail Kutsnetsov]

I'm gonna forget about it. Correct. So you wanna honor people's time. And so the way that that looks is coordinating a sync or a waterfall between all of your teams. So for your marketing team to have an early bird page for your influencer or whoever's in charge of social to have the appropriate posts to push to to that early bird page well in advance. You don't want to find yourself seven days before the challenge starts and all of a sudden nobody knows about it. There's no awareness.

[Emma Rainville]

Right. So that algorithm is not going to have time to pick up. You want my from my side of things. I always want the algorithm to be at its peak during the peak time. So what that means is when we run Facebook ads to a challenge, the first 10 to 14 days is just warming the algorithm on Facebook. The we've tested this and the people who Buy the high ticket on the back end. Generally, the people and show up for the challenge are the people who bought the seven days prior to the challenge. That doesn't mean that we don't start selling until seven days before the challenge. We want all the things to be in place so I can get the most amount of people for the least amount of money during that period. So we go 21 days in advance as well.

[Mikhail Kutsnetsov]

Absolutely. And you have a ramp up, and that ramp up is organic plus paid, typically. So you want to make sure that your organic team that's doing your social and your paid team are actually communicating and saying, hey, you know what? This post really took off.

[Emma Rainville]

Hear that? Communicating. Because this is, this was in the first time we worked together, we. This was a little bit of a challenge for us. I mean, it was fine. We, we worked it out. Mostly me. I told you what you were going to do. But give or take.

[Mikhail Kutsnetsov]

Give or take.

[Emma Rainville]

But no, seriously, it was challenging for us because we had not worked together before. We didn't understand each other's cadences, communic channels. And when. And again, when your organic team is doing one thing and your paid teams doing another, they're accidentally hurting each other. So you need to have everybody on the same page. In addition to that, you need to have your customer service team or whoever's answering your Facebook comments to be on the same page. And understand when you're selling challenges, you're going to get a lot of people that will come in and just troll you, you know, like, this is a scam. This is so dumb. I can't learn x for $14. They're going to try and sell you something. So you want them to understand one, they need to respond to it very, very quickly. So sorry, that's been your experience. That's not how we do things. Thank you so much for your comment. And then you hide the comment, you don't delete the comment because Facebook, again, you want to do this for heightened algorithm. You hide the comment. But if they don't know that these ads are running and where we've got tons of people, they may be looking every three to four hours instead of every half hour, which is the cadence I want when I'm running traffic. So just making sure communications are streamlined. But I'll let you go back. I just really wanted to point that out because that's a huge, huge issue in marketing operations.

[Mikhail Kutsnetsov]

Absolutely. And there's actually an exponential benefit that you get from that. I call it kind of pockets of genius where look, your Your customer support rep is a customer support rep for a reason. Your CMO is your CMO for a reason. They have a core area of competency, and they have specific variables that they see that your ads, your. Your media buyer might not be aware of. The person who's posting on social media might see a feedback loop that's really positive that they can then pass over to your ads person, who then can pass that over to your funnel person and actually adjust the offer on the fly.

[Emma Rainville]

Right. And we're talking about messaging here. What he's talking about is messaging.

[Mikhail Kutsnetsov]

Yeah. And the way that translates operationally. Sometimes operationally, you're looking at metrics. You're saying, why is. You know, what's our page pass through? Right. What is our conversion rate into the actual challenge? What is our CPA on the ad side?

[Emma Rainville]

Sometimes that can take a really long time, but comments on the ads can really heighten it. Yeah.

[Mikhail Kutsnetsov]

So, yeah, you can get a lot of velocity off of it, but sometimes you're looking at it from an operation standpoint. And again, pockets of genius. You might not have the pocket of genius to understand what are the buttons that I need to push or the levers I need to pull. So you need to be able to diagnose that and see, hey, this is what's happening. And the more context that you have as an operator for the core competencies of the teams that you work with, the more you're gonna actually be able to direct them and guide them to those communications that are gonna create those positive synergies. It's very, very important, because very often I see people launch a challenge. Their mechanism isn't strong, and it's not performing out the gate. And all they really need to do is sit down and say, did we take the time to listen to our customer before? Did we survey our customer before we did this? Oh, we didn't survey our customer at all. So we're completely running blind here. And that creates a lot of stress. Because think about it. As an operator, it's your job to make the business function.

[Emma Rainville]

Right.

[Mikhail Kutsnetsov]

That's literally your. Your job. And so to do that, you have a lot of other people that need to do their job, and they need to do it very effectively and efficiently, and they need to do it in a way that creates positive synergies without you having to force those synergies. So I'll kind of give you an example of that, is if you're in that prelaunch phase again, you're running traffic, you're seeing an ad that's taken, that's really converting, you have organic, that's tracking at the same time. And hopefully your marketing team did their job, which I'll talk about briefly here. And make sure everything's pixeled, making sure that you have a dashboard, making sure that you have page analytics you want to be looking at. What is that pass through and what is that cadence of that pass through with that consistent posting? And very, very important, what is our mechanism for bringing that ROI into baseline? Because a lot of people, from a financial standpoint, right, we're not talking, you know, CFO controller stuff, but it's pretty important if you spend a ton of money, spend six figures on a challenge in ad spend, for you to have some sort of control over what that backend ROI is going to look like. Because there's nothing worse than going into a challenge, having spent 100k and you're starting that challenge, being out 100k being and so you feel like you have to sell. It creates very unique energy during the event that can be a lot more positive. That is actually proven to convert a lot better when you don't have that scarcity. And so the way that you do that is through creating, let's say you're running a low ticket challenge. It's not a lot of money to get in. Creating a really great VIP cadence, making sure that your marketing team is aware of, hey, when people get this offer, do we have an email sequence? Do we have the necessary tools in place to help us send people up? That way instead of getting back 50 bucks per person, we're actually getting back 90 bucks per person right from the gate. That's a huge difference in the amount of money they can spend on traffic. And that translates all the way through to the buying behavior eventually. Because your final goal, what's your final goal? For people to show up and buy your thing. If that's through an application to a sales call or if that's straight to Lander, that's the end goal in mind. I see a lot of people get lose kind of the, the forest for the trees and their challenge. They're trying to run the best challenge but they forget that their goal is conversion and pass through and to architect that you really have to start with the end in mind and think through what is the psychological profile of the person that we're bringing into this mechanism and is the mechanism optimized to work. Have we all sat down? Not just the marketing team and not just the ops team, not just support. Have we all sat down and really looked at this and asked ourselves is this the best mechanism? Because that's what makes great challenges is having a team that comes together synergistically, communicates and asks the hard questions. And as an operator you've actually been really fantastic at this of making it safe for people to ask the hard questions.

[Emma Rainville]

Thank you.

[Mikhail Kutsnetsov]

In order to have the desired.

[Emma Rainville]

I don't like dumb questions. I like hard questions.

[Mikhail Kutsnetsov]

Yeah, yeah, you've been fantastic at it. And the hardest questions lead to the greatest exponent in transformational growth which then is the best possible outcome because people are then accountable. And so you know, from an operations standpoint like every single person on the team needs to be held accountable, but they need to know what they're held accountable to. And that's why I think this, you know, seven figure challenge blueprint is going to be really helpful because I'll, we'll.

[Emma Rainville]

Show that I think it's going to be amazing. I'm really excited for it because you're the hidden secret. And that's true. You're the hidden secret behind many challenges. No one knows who you are. I know who you are. Some of the biggest names to know who you are because you're, you're the blueprint to their challenges. So that's why I'm really thrilled to have you on let's, I want to make sure that we get every to everything today. So we've got, you know, what business does a challenge work for? What are the questions that we ask? What are the traffic? But I'd really like to back up for a moment because the major part of this that's operations is the project management side making sure all the pieces fit. And we've seen in challenges you and I have gotten called into different companies to consult and what's going on, what's, you know, why isn't this working? And it's because they missed some really big component that didn't feel important. So let's kind of run through. Okay. We've decided we're going to do a challenge.

[Mikhail Kutsnetsov]

Yep.

[Emma Rainville]

Let's put the ads to the side. We've talked about that enough. Now what are all the things that need to go in and there's going to be some pain points for me that frustrate me with challenges and visionary entrepreneurs. But I'm gonna make sure I touch on But I'd love to just like let's run from. We're doing a challenge. We're going to in three days teach you X. We're gonna get you to X. It could Be. We're gonna help you lose five pounds. We're going to help you scale a business. Yeah, scale a business. We're gonna help you build Perry Belcher's doing run right now. Damn good. Write a damn book with AI.

[Mikhail Kutsnetsov]

It's a good, really good three days.

[Emma Rainville]

It's a really good hook.

[Mikhail Kutsnetsov]

Yeah. What? So, so let's talk through the cadence. Number one, early bird page. Number two, content. Number three, ads number.

[Emma Rainville]

Okay, so let's, let's go first, though.

[Mikhail Kutsnetsov]

Yep.

[Emma Rainville]

I'm sorry, you're going to say number four. Ads.

[Mikhail Kutsnetsov]

Yeah. So number four ads. And number four is. Thank you page. And number five is immediate email or some sort of communication email plus SMS for that early bird signup.

[Emma Rainville]

So now let's go dissect that for a minute.

[Mikhail Kutsnetsov]

Yep.

[Emma Rainville]

The amount of times that I've seen people do challenges for $299 or for free, you can't do either. It drives me absolutely crazy. So I'd love to just kind of dissect this. When you're pricing your challenge, how do you price your challenge?

[Mikhail Kutsnetsov]

So this depends a little bit on the market that you're in and the avatar that you're dealing with. I recommend not running free unless you have a really dialed in system. I recommend running paid first. You can go from $7 all the way up to. I've seen 97 work. Yeah, 7 is very difficult, but if your upsell cadence is good, it works.

[Emma Rainville]

We're going to talk about that in a second because that is how you identify your buyers and that's super important. So I want to go over this really quickly. So there's a couple of different people that you want on your challenges. One, the people who bought your high ticket offer.

[Mikhail Kutsnetsov]

Yep.

[Emma Rainville]

You always want to offer all of your challenges to them for free. If you're doing the same exact challenge over and over and over again, you will get offer fatigue. So you want to switch it up a little bit if you're teaching like, like Perry Belcher teaches business development. Right. And so he changes that. How to launch a newsletter, how to launch a book, how to create a SaaS for your business using Bolt or Lovable. So he's doing the same thing but a different mechanism each time so it doesn't create burnout. And he's able to continue to put people into his high ticket. So that's number one, understand what you're selling when you're pricing it. There. My favorite price point, no matter what you're selling honestly, and you're right, it does matter. It absolutely does matter. But my favorite price point is generally $14. Yeah, the $14 just seems to really work well. The second person you want on is people who are going to be really, really excited and overjoyed and thrilled that would never buy your product.

[Mikhail Kutsnetsov]

Yep.

[Emma Rainville]

Because the average person who's buying a high ticket isn't in the comments. Like, this is incredible. I think this is so smart. Like, they're just not that person. But that does add to the ambiance and the vibe of the whole thing. So you still want that person on there. So you want to make it affordable for them to get on there, because they're creating the vibe, they creating the cadence. And then you want your buyer.

[Mikhail Kutsnetsov]

Yep.

[Emma Rainville]

And your buyer is going to take your upsell. So let's talk about upsell flows or VIP tickets or however you want to.

[Mikhail Kutsnetsov]

Yeah, absolutely. Let me lead into this with a little. Little more. A little more space leading in. Because we talked about what to do. You know, we've decided to do it, and we've got an early bird page. We have our email sequence. We have our ads up. We have our organic content up. We have our thank you page. They opt in. The next phase is actually the setup phase, which a lot of people miss. And I want to go through that really quickly because you talked about, you know, number one, the upsell, but the upsell is a result. The take rate is a result, and that result can be systematized. So what I mean by that is now you have a setup phase, where, from an off standpoint, you have to ask the hard questions. Okay, we've. We're getting people into the challenge. They're going in. We're going to have these three days. What happens during those three days? Like, do we have a cadence for what happens during those three days? Do we have reminders going out to people to show up? Because you can't get that conversion without people being on the calls. So those three archetypes that you talked about, you know, you got to have the way that we do it. We do six hours before, one hour before, 15 minutes before live, we do a replay. There's like eight different communication things that happen on that day. And then also, once you've got them in the live room and they're active, how is that cadence working? And this part is extremely important. And we'll talk about that of the actual content of the challenge to get those buyers in, because, yes, you can do, you know, 14 bucks? I've seen 27 work. I've seen 67 work. I've seen 47 work. It really depends on your CPA offset on your ads, and it's just a matter of dialing in and who's taking what.

[Emma Rainville]

Right.

[Mikhail Kutsnetsov]

But the biggest thing that I've seen make is a Make it or break it. This is literally the challenge will not function without this component is the cadence of the actual. Let's say three days of number one. How long are those calls? Are they an hour? Are they an hour and a half? Are they two hours? Does it matter? Are there bonus calls, or is it just the three days and that's it? And how are these calls positioned? Because we've all had it where we have a zoom call on a calendar, and we look at it, and we dread it. Are you ever have that where you're just looking like, I don't want to every day? Yeah, like every.

[Emma Rainville]

I'm an operator every day.

[Mikhail Kutsnetsov]

I'm sure every call you do with me, you're like, oh, my God, I.

[Emma Rainville]

Don'T want to be Monday at 11:30. I just want to punch myself in the face.

[Mikhail Kutsnetsov]

All right, it's going to, right? So. So. But I think a really good example is audible. With audible, those of you who don't know audible is an app, and you just pay monthly and every month, you get a credit. So when you see your audible rebill, instead of triggering cortisol, it actually triggers dopamine. You go, ooh, I have a new book that I can now go read. But this part's really important is making sure that they are excited to show up to those calls because they will have paid, and most people will pay for something but not hold themselves accountable to actually show up. So your end result of your main offer and your challenge has to be very, very clear and very clearly communicated over and over and over again. I think one mistake that I've seen a lot of people make is they'll communicate the benefit. And they're like, okay, I'm done. I communicated it. But the people who are the best at doing this, they communicate that benefit over and over and over again repeatedly. So it creates familiarity and anchors in their mind that, hey, day two, you got to show up because you're going to get this. Day three, you got to show up that you got to get this. And the reason why this is important is because, again, we're talking conversion. How do we get people to buy. When is the pitch? You know, this is. This is a really important piece. It's like, what happens on the calls? When is the pitch? Is it on day two? Is it on day one? Is it on day three? I recommend doing it halfway through day two. But again we vary that. What is the pitch and what is the pipeline process? And I see a lot of people make this mistake that they'll do a challenge. They're putting people into a list, but there's no pipeline process whatsoever for getting those leads to that final sale. They just have them kind of tagged in an email list. Well, that's not going to help you. What you need is you need a pipeline process that shows. Here are all the people that bought the general admission ticket. We had a bump in a vip. So these are the people that bought the bump as well. These are the people that bought the vip and then these are the people that submitted the pre challenge intake, which we've been doing a lot. That works fantastic. So now you, you, before you even did your first call, you actually have four layers of qualification already in place.

[Emma Rainville]

So I'd love all of this. You and I both know what each of those things mean. Let's just explain each one.

[Mikhail Kutsnetsov]

Sure.

[Emma Rainville]

So people understand VIP bump?

[Mikhail Kutsnetsov]

Sure, absolutely. So what I'm talking about is literally having a pipeline in go high level for all these people and each of these offers, the general admission ticket is just, you see a challenge on the page, it's 14 bucks, you buy the challenge and that's, you have to be.

[Emma Rainville]

Present for the challenge because you don't get the recordings.

[Mikhail Kutsnetsov]

Correct. You don't get the recordings, you don't get anything extra.

[Emma Rainville]

Is just you, you just show up and that's it.

[Mikhail Kutsnetsov]

Yep. You're, you're general admission. Just like at any concert or any sort of situation, your general admission, you want to be there, but not so badly that you're going to go above and beyond. And typically what we do from an offer standpoint is we put a bump. Now that bump can vary. That bump could be the recordings. That bump can also be supplementary materials. There's a lot of things that you can do to elicit compliance. The, the goal of the bump is to elicit compliance. It's very, very important. So it might seem like it's something extra that they're getting, but it's not. It's actually something extra that you're getting by them getting the bump. And you want at least a 20 to 30% take rate. At least 20%, 30%. Pretty good. If you're up in the 40s, you're crushing it. And the way that that could look is let's say you have a $15 challenge, that bump might be 50 bucks. And what it might say is, hey, we're going to go through this challenge. We're going to give you all the recordings and I'm also going to give you the breakdown of all the tools that I cover in the challenge. I'm actually going to give you access to the tools and a free trial to some of the tools that have a value of $500. You're getting that for 50 bucks. That's a no brainer. You're going to get all the tools. And what you do during is you actually keep that option open for people to be able to bump up. A lot of people miss that too. They'll get all their GA's in and they're forgetting that people will buy from you. You don't have to wait for the pitch for them to buy from you. The more that people buy, the more they will continue to buy. Right. Like everybody who's listening probably has a brand that they love, whatever that is. Maybe it's a clothing brand, maybe it's.

[Emma Rainville]

You know, if you're a Nike shoe buyer, you're a Nike shoe buyer, you're.

[Mikhail Kutsnetsov]

Probably going to continue.

[Emma Rainville]

Right? If you're an Apple buyer, you're an.

[Mikhail Kutsnetsov]

Apple buyer, you're going to continue with the trend. So you want to actually start establishing that trend. So the bump is a compliance mechanism. And then what you have is you have a vip. And what VIP is, is again, another benefit for you. The way that that looks is, hey, you're gonna get the ability to ask questions. Only VIPs can ask questions on this challenge. That's it. You can position it however you want. But that's a really good one, is if you're not vip, your chat is muted. If you are vip, you actually have the option at the end to ask those questions. What does that do? That creates exclusivity. It makes everybody else think, oh, man, they're up at the front of the room. Why are they at the front of the room and I'm not? I want to be at the front of the room.

[Emma Rainville]

It Only is a $97 fee to be in the front. It's only so you can actually have more opportunity to sell your VIP on day two of your challenge than any other day if you do it correctly.

[Mikhail Kutsnetsov]

Correct? That is absolutely correct. And then it also allows you for the ability to create a little bit of an us versus them. And this part is really important because when your VIPs are asking those questions, you have the opportunity to, to get them excited. To support them and to create this sense that they are winners. That they are.

[Emma Rainville]

And we generally do a VIP day only for VIPs. Absolutely.

[Mikhail Kutsnetsov]

And so that makes everybody else want to be a winner. You are rewarding the people that are taking the action that you want them to take. And you are subconsciously allowing them to self punish themselves if they do not take those appropriate actions. This part's really important. You don't want to be punishing and demeaning people. You want to be hyping up the people that took the action that you want and the people that didn't. You want them to feel left out. Kind of like, oh, why didn't I get invited to the party? So that part's really important. The importance of those cadences. And now let me get to the actual positioning of the offer. So now you're halfway through day two. You've done a great sequence leading up to it. Your customer support team knows what's going on. Your sales team is prepared, because your sales team is going to be sitting there waiting with all these leads that are about to come in. I'm going to assume for the case of this that it's an application. What you're positioning is, hey, we have this amazing offer and to have the opportunity to get it, you've got to submit an application. You can do it a bunch of different ways. You can just send straight to purchase. But for this case, let's say it's application and it's day two and you've primed them. And one point here on the priming is when you structure those three days, you want to think of it that by the, by the halfway point in day two, whenever your pitch comes, what are the beliefs that the person needs to have in order for them to be able to take the action that you want them to take? I'm gonna say it one more time. Cause I think this is really important. What are the beliefs that the person needs to have for them to take the action that you want them to take? So if somebody feels that your main offer is unattainable halfway through day two, they're not gonna submit. If somebody feels that your offer is just not for them, they're not going to take.

[Emma Rainville]

So I want to just pop in here for a second because here's why this isn't. But you're speaking a whole bunch of marketing. But here's why this is important for operations. These entrepreneurs and influencers get so excited about the. I'm going to be in front of so many people that they don't think through this part of the challenge, and this part of the challenge is them. So it's important for them to know on each day what they need to be relaying as a message. I want to get finish this part, but then we got to move on because we still have the whole back end of the challenge.

[Mikhail Kutsnetsov]

Absolutely. So it's day two. You go out, you do your pitch. An important operational component is making sure that, like the slide decks or whatever the assets are, that the person who's delivering has a great pitch in there. So your marketing team needs to have that really down pat. And as an operator, I highly recommend you actually review it because you're going to notice things that the marketing team wouldn't have.

[Emma Rainville]

Right.

[Mikhail Kutsnetsov]

Such as, hey, this bonus doesn't exist.

[Emma Rainville]

Or right, this bonus doesn't exist and we need to create it.

[Mikhail Kutsnetsov]

We need to create it.

[Emma Rainville]

Or my favorite. And you and I have worked together enough that I've messaged you and said, hey, the math doesn't math, bro. Yeah, like value, value, value, value should be. Those things don't math. Those things don't math.

[Mikhail Kutsnetsov]

Right, Right. And because you're going to have logical people, you're going to have emotional people. Any logical guy can do math. They're going to see.

[Emma Rainville]

But decide the slide with all the money not adding up is definitely a problem.

[Mikhail Kutsnetsov]

It's a big no no.

[Emma Rainville]

Right. But. But it's the simple things. And also it's like the details in the fabric. The operations have that. Marketing. Marketing wants to say all the things that marketing wants to say to sell people.

[Mikhail Kutsnetsov]

Yep.

[Emma Rainville]

Operations wants to make sure that all the components that need to be delivered are.

[Mikhail Kutsnetsov]

Are delivered in place.

[Emma Rainville]

And. And we have them. The amount of times where I've gotten a message that, you know, one of these wonderful people that I work with, it's kind enough to. To pay me every month. Someone will message me and say so and so on X Challenge said that we were gonna get xyz and I'm like, I don't think that exists.

[Mikhail Kutsnetsov]

Yeah, I don't know.

[Emma Rainville]

Sure, sure.

[Mikhail Kutsnetsov]

Yeah.

[Emma Rainville]

It never does. We have to scramble, but I'll let you continue.

[Mikhail Kutsnetsov]

Absolutely. Well. And part of being a great operator and you definitely have this quality is making the people on your team except excited to communicate to you of, hey, we are the marketing team. We just created XYZ Bonus. We want to make sure that you, from an operations standpoint, can coordinate with fulfillment on that. Whereas if. If you're not creating that space for the other people in the team, what's going to happen is you're going to have these silos of people doing stuff.

[Emma Rainville]

And the amount of times that marketing threw in a bonus and a challenge or in a workshop or whatever that they created the bonus, didn't tell anybody that they created the bonus, Ops went in, said, oh, crap, recreated the bonus, wasn't nearly, you know, as good because marketing's always gonna be better on positioning. Right. And so just the amount of times that that double work has happened because of these oh, crap factors. But I wanna get to now we've got the whole challenge built out now we've got all the components to it, someone needs to present on it, and the amount of times that you and I have had a completely done product a week or two ahead of time, and then whoever was going to present on it looked at it an hour before and wanted a gazillion changes. Do you like the amount of times that we were making changes in the slides while the slides were live during the challenge at Operations Palpitations? So one of the things that I. Yeah, I have a sign above my desk. It's says that. But anyway, so one of the things that I highly, highly recommend from an OPS perspective is that three full days before the challenge, you get on a call with the marketing team, the ops team and the customer service team and you run through the pitch deck. 100% you run through the pitch deck. This allows customer service to ask any questions. They'll see more holes than operations or marketing, actually. They're so used to people calling in and complaining and asking questions that they know what's coming. So they'll want to know and man the amount of failures that they've kept us from being in. And then marketing and Ops can also have conversations and at the same time, your influencer, business owner, visionary entrepreneur, who's ever doing it, they can get clear on. Because if they don't know what they're presenting, a lot of times the affect is all wrong when they're laying it out. No matter how much you prep them until they go through that pitch deck, it's just not going to be the same. So highly, highly recommend 3 days before everybody on the team gets on, they go through that pitch deck, changes can be made, live there, and then everybody knows what's going on. And that is the main component to challenges. I've seen them fail miserably because of this one thing.

[Mikhail Kutsnetsov]

Absolutely. You know, this really comes down to your role as an operator. You are, you know, there's kind of a rule that these top Silicon Valley entrepreneurs have is that every great business has two roles. They have a chaos grader and they have a chaos controller.

[Emma Rainville]

Right.

[Mikhail Kutsnetsov]

And this is absolutely true. And so your role is to control the chaos. And I do think that it's important to understand that someone who's a chaos creator are that way for a reason. And you want to build the system of micro compliance and compliance that's going to force them. And I think that's the key word is actually force them into a little bit of a box that they feel they can get back out of.

[Emma Rainville]

Right. Because they're, they're not getting on and looking through these slides because they need to prepare. It's because they need to prepare the team.

[Mikhail Kutsnetsov]

Correct.

[Emma Rainville]

And that, that's, that's a different reframe. Okay, we're, we're, we're getting there. So now we're on the back end. We're done with the challenge.

[Mikhail Kutsnetsov]

Yep. So we just pitched and.

[Emma Rainville]

Well, that's, we usually have days after to repitch and repitch and repitch.

[Mikhail Kutsnetsov]

Sure. But so let's start from.

[Emma Rainville]

Sure.

[Mikhail Kutsnetsov]

It's day two. We just pitched. Right. So because there's a, there's a spot where ops and marketing meet and it's the checkout page.

[Emma Rainville]

Right, right, right.

[Mikhail Kutsnetsov]

That's where. That's Right. That's my rule.

[Emma Rainville]

Right. It's the money.

[Mikhail Kutsnetsov]

It's the. Right. So like, okay, you got people to apply, and so now you pitched, you got people opting in, they're booking calls. Everything's awesome. And again, from an op standpoint, did we set up a calendar link for people to be able to book calls? Does the application submission notify us in Slack and go to a spreadsheet and go to a pipeline? Cause that's the way that we have it set up. When somebody submits that application, they go to a spreadsheet, they go to a pipeline, and we get a notification and we get an email. So every single person, we have all the data and then we push them into a separate database for that. And this is so important because it's so easy to go. Okay, cool. We pitched and we're done. Yay. And then it's day three. And day three is like celebration day. And what you mentioned is fantastic of re pitching. So let me, let me kind of talk to you.

[Emma Rainville]

My mom's. I don't pitch till day 10. That's when I count the money of what we sold on the back end.

[Mikhail Kutsnetsov]

Sure, sure.

[Emma Rainville]

But marketing, of course.

[Mikhail Kutsnetsov]

Yeah. Well, well, the thing that Drives. You know, the other place to meet is the metrics. Right. As well. Like, that's another good synergistic crossroad. And if the metrics, let's say you pitch and you get all these calls booked, you don't know how many of those people are going to show up to those calls. Right. I mean, you're going to close.

[Emma Rainville]

You don't you actually know how good you did on the marketing side when people show up?

[Mikhail Kutsnetsov]

Absolutely.

[Emma Rainville]

Because then you've left a big enough feedback loop and you've left enough curiosity and you've made them believe that they were going to walk away with something for showing up on that call.

[Mikhail Kutsnetsov]

Correct.

[Emma Rainville]

And so, yeah, that's, that's. That's a big tell on the marketing side of a challenge is how many people showed up to the challenge itself and how many people showed up to the calls thereafter.

[Mikhail Kutsnetsov]

Absolutely. And I wanted to start the back cadence there because a lot of people will go out of day two and maybe they don't see quite the calls book that they expected and they think the challenge is a flop.

[Emma Rainville]

Right.

[Mikhail Kutsnetsov]

It's very important to understand that that is potentially not the case.

[Emma Rainville]

And then they screw the entire. We've seen this over and over again. They screw the entire challenge up because on day three, they're freaking out.

[Mikhail Kutsnetsov]

Yep. And so you have chaotic energy act.

[Emma Rainville]

Chaotic and crazy and very pushy and it just completely sucks the vibe out.

[Mikhail Kutsnetsov]

Yes. You have to be careful with that. You have to control your own psychology and the psychology of the presenter and the team. And because a lot of the sales are made way after. So then you go day three, you do a repitch on day three. And, you know, there's a lot of different variations. We always recommend doing a bonus day of some kind of announcing that and then.

[Emma Rainville]

And then a VIP day on top of that. Just to be clear, you do a bonus day and you announce the bonus day on day three. We have so much for you. We have so much for you. And we really crammed it in in three days, but we just want to give more.

[Mikhail Kutsnetsov]

Yeah.

[Emma Rainville]

So even though you've already gotten everything we promised, we've just been so excited about working with you. I wanted to do a little bit extra and teach you this next thing.

[Mikhail Kutsnetsov]

Want to go extra? Yeah, totally. And you can do another one for VIPs. You can also do one for people who submitted an application.

[Emma Rainville]

Right.

[Mikhail Kutsnetsov]

And this one's really good. We've been using this one a lot more. People who submitted an application, some of them have maybe had their call and already closed. Some of them haven't. And this, unless you actually do a short form webinar, essentially to people who submitted an app, you're basically discussing the offer.

[Emma Rainville]

Right. With those people and answering all their questions.

[Mikhail Kutsnetsov]

It's a group sales call. So. So that works fantastic as follow up. And so if you're coming out of day two, you still have day three, you still have a bonus day, you still have VIP day, you still have, you know, an application day if you want to. To repitch people. And the other component, let me kind of go through that cadence really quickly because this cadence is really important, is your sales team needs to be on top of their leads. So just because they did a call doesn't. And the person didn't buy, they need to be circling back. And so that sales team, your chief of sales, needs to tell you what is the cadence that we have for these people because we paid a lot.

[Emma Rainville]

Of money to relentless pursuit until they tell us to stop. Essentially wait until they're threatening you with the restraining order, whatever the case is.

[Mikhail Kutsnetsov]

And whatever cultural, you know, norms you adhere to in your organization. Yes, correct. Right. So making sure that that's important. But then also, once you're done with that, let's say that you have finished.

[Emma Rainville]

I just want to go back to that for just a second. Because if your sales team is trained properly, they spent a lot more time at the beginning listening than they did talking.

[Mikhail Kutsnetsov]

Yep.

[Emma Rainville]

And so they started with, hey, Mikhail, what's the biggest pain point you have right now that all of this would be worth it if we solved for you today? And you're talking about the challenge. They haven't even been hit with the money, so now I know what they're struggling with. And you're just asking them question after question. You're taking notes on those. And then when they don't buy, let's say Mikhail's biggest challenge is, you know, he. He will just.

[Mikhail Kutsnetsov]

We'll pretend too handsome.

[Emma Rainville]

God, something. You are just something else. You really are something.

[Mikhail Kutsnetsov]

Being too funny.

[Emma Rainville]

Okay. Funny looking delusional. Being too delusional. Okay. So. So, Mikhail, I know you're. I know you're struggling. Maybe your struggles. Maybe it was a CPA offer where they're going to offer you tax strategy. Know a guy, Ryan Bakey, that does this really, really great offer. Okay, so let's say you're on that. And I know that your biggest issue is you pay so much in taxes and you have all this real estate and you don't know how to offset. Offset it. And that's what Ryan teaches. Right. But you didn't buy. I might, as your salesperson, follow up with you and be like, hey, I was just on Ryan's weekly call with his mastermind people, and unfortunately, you know, you're not in the group, so I can't divulge everything to you. But here's like, my top two takeaways. I was thinking you. I just really wanted you to know about this.

[Mikhail Kutsnetsov]

That's a really great process from a sales psychology and marketing side.

[Emma Rainville]

Sometimes people will buy three to six months later because you built the rapport.

[Mikhail Kutsnetsov]

You care.

[Emma Rainville]

You built the rapport. You showed that you care about them. And maybe, you know, economically right now it didn't make sense. Yeah. But now it does. Or maybe you've let it make sense because you've given them all these little tidbits that they've gotten. So those are some of the. So the sales team is. It's so important, so huge.

[Mikhail Kutsnetsov]

Let me add another layer to what you just said, because this ties back to where we started, which is why you run a challenge in the first place, is to get that face to face with them. And you do that because you want to build a relationship. You want to build a customer for life. I know that sounds cheesy, but it's.

[Emma Rainville]

It doesn't. It's wise.

[Mikhail Kutsnetsov]

It's true.

[Emma Rainville]

One off customers are expensive. Cost of acquisition is expensive. People who buy from you. Perry Belcher, who we. We also both work with, he has people like. Like, no kidding. We were in, we do a mastermind boardroom where we meet with them quarterly, him and I, and we were meeting with them last weekend, and one of the guys said something and. And I was like, what are you guys talking about? It was a product that Perry sold like 17 years ago, 16 years ago, that he had bought. And I was like, wait, yeah, like, that's crazy. But that happens with Perry all the time. Right?

[Mikhail Kutsnetsov]

So, yeah, you never know. Like, why did you get into business in the first place? Hopefully it's because you realize that you.

[Emma Rainville]

Have something to help people.

[Mikhail Kutsnetsov]

Yeah. You have the opportunity to make a change. Absolutely. 100%. And so this is a vehicle for you to do that. And I love the positioning there and making sure that, again, your sales team has a great pipeline. And I'll add one more layer to this post challenge flow is that what's going to happen is you're going to have really high quantity on the people that came in. You're going to have much less quantity on the people that actually booked a call and even less quantity on the people that bought. So you're going to have a lot of Runway in those leads that are in the middle. And a lot of people just forget about those leads. Come up with a downsell offer. Come up with something that's super easy access. And here's the craziest, let me just.

[Emma Rainville]

Throw this out there. You don't want to cannibalize your offer that they may be good for by giving them a piece of it cheaper. Of course that's really important. Well, of course for you. But that's not just known to people. So when you create a downsell, the downsell is something that is the same idea but completely different, unique.

[Mikhail Kutsnetsov]

And I'll give a great example of this. And there's a really cool mechanism that you can utilize that works absolutely fantastic. So what you do is you go through, let's say you have your 10 day cadence post pitch. You've exhausted all the leads that you need to exhaust. You've hit everybody up your follow up offer. What you can do is say, hey, how would you like your challenge money that you paid back?

[Emma Rainville]

I've never seen this done before.

[Mikhail Kutsnetsov]

How would you like that money back? We have a amazing offer for you. Now you can do a one time but I actually recommend doing a recurring. You do a low ticket recurring. We have our amazing low ticket community. It's 97 bucks a month and we saw that you got the VIP ticket and you got this. So you know, we're just gonna round you up. We're gonna round you up and we're gonna give you the first month for free.

[Emma Rainville]

Check it out and if you wanna.

[Mikhail Kutsnetsov]

You can buy it and you push them to a $0 initial but then they are on your subscription.

[Emma Rainville]

Right.

[Mikhail Kutsnetsov]

And what that allows you to do is again, you're serving yourself in, allowing you to create another feedback loop with.

[Emma Rainville]

Right.

[Mikhail Kutsnetsov]

And you're putting people on recurring. This works absolutely fantastic. And it's such a unique mechanism. Very few people have kind of caught onto this one yet. But it works super well because there's a lot of people in that audience that they can't afford 15k and they.

[Emma Rainville]

Get on that or 25k or 25k or even 3k. Just depends.

[Mikhail Kutsnetsov]

It's just, and this is huge we talked about customers for life is there's an emotional component to, you know, just visualize somebody going into a car dealership, seeing the car they really want and then realizing they're just, they just haven't Built the life to be able to afford that car and then they have to go home. That's a very demoralizing and personal experience for somebody and very often.

[Emma Rainville]

Or motivational for some.

[Mikhail Kutsnetsov]

For some, sure. But from what we've seen, it's not.

[Emma Rainville]

It doesn't leave people in a good place.

[Mikhail Kutsnetsov]

It doesn't leave people in a good place when they hop on a sales call with a rep and they realize that, hey, this is something that could genuinely benefit them, they're just not in a position to do it. So what this allows you to do is to take the energy out of that and to transform it. And this is really huge because now you're taking this energy of them feeling bad about themselves and you're actually giving them something in return which makes them feel good about themselves, which then associates your brand in their mind as something that's really positive. Because think about it, if you hopped off a sales call and you feel down, you're probably not going to want to interface with that brand again. But if you hopped off and you got a gift, you got something that you, you ended up getting in return, you're like, oh, that's okay. I feel good. So that's a really good component.

[Emma Rainville]

Really great place for us to leave off. Mikhail, how do people find you?

[Mikhail Kutsnetsov]

You can find me on Instagram @mvkbiz.

[Emma Rainville]

You send people to your Instagram. Your Instagram is so weird.

[Mikhail Kutsnetsov]

It is, but we're.

[Emma Rainville]

You're like cuddling with cats. I had to hide you.

[Mikhail Kutsnetsov]

Yeah, that's good. It's a good sign.

[Emma Rainville]

You send people to your Instagram.

[Mikhail Kutsnetsov]

Yeah.

[Emma Rainville]

Okay.

[Mikhail Kutsnetsov]

Yeah, that's where I post the most content.

[Emma Rainville]

That's why nobody know. Yeah, they're Jew. And cats.

[Mikhail Kutsnetsov]

I like cats.

[Emma Rainville]

Okay. All right, so I guess go to Mikael's Instagram and. What is it? One more time.

[Mikhail Kutsnetsov]

It's VKBiz. Yeah, we've got a lot of really cool copywriting, marketing, AI content coming up. It's actually gonna be really sucked. So I'm excited about it.

[Emma Rainville]

And don't forget the cats. Okay, so check out Mikhail Kuzanutsov. That's actually his name, Kuznetsov. Check him out. Check out his instagram. Go to www.specialopspodcast.com. we're going to have that seven figure challenge blueprint for you. So if you found this helpful, exciting, you want to learn more, go ahead over there and grab it. Don't forget to like and subscribe. And as always, thank you for listening to Special Ops podcast. I'm Emma Rainville, your host. And we're out.