← The Futur with Chris Do
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- [00:00]
A
So you don't need more than 500 followers on LinkedIn to actually make sales on the platform.
- [00:06]
B
If you're a creator and you've been creating content on LinkedIn and other platforms and have been totally dead with leads, I think you're going to want to stick around and listen to what my next guest is going to tell you because he believes, controversially, that you don't even need more than 500 followers to actually make a living doing this as a creator.
- [00:22]
A
I'm Matthew Le Cave and you're listening to the Future.
- [00:28]
B
Can you please introduce yourself, Matt, to people who don't know you and tell us a little bit about your if.
- [00:32]
A
Anyone who doesn't know me, my name is Matthew Lakaya. Probably from sound of my voice you can hear him from Australia. I run a program called Seven Figure Creators where we work with small business owners and like LinkedIn creators, we show them how to implement a system in their business, how to generate leads themselves so they don't have to rely on other people. A little bit about my past, like I got into software sales when I in 2018, I worked at Zoom Video Communications before COVID and then during COVID 19 and after. So I definitely remember the effect of what brand does to your business because before COVID no one would speak to you. But then after Covid everyone wanted to speak to Zoom, so 100% agree and I saw the brand there. And then after software sales I kind of fell in love with sales itself and I grew up around small business owners, so I really wanted to kind of make a mark and then slowly move my way into opening my own lead generation business. But cold lead generation, like cold calling and cold emailing, I don't think is the best bet for most businesses. And I tried that for about seven months and it's really hard because you have to sell with a really difficult sales process. And so we kind of started venturing down and listening to a lot of clients and we realized they just need a few warm leads per week. And I remember one day hearing that and I was like, I can just do that on LinkedIn, it's like a lot easier. And kind of fell into launching the program. We work with about 650 small business owners from all around the world and creators helping them build a lead generation system to generate leads for their business through LinkedIn. So that's a bit about me.
- [02:10]
B
You said you were in sales, you worked with large company like Zoom, and then you went out on your own and then you tried to do cold outreach and you're not a fan of it and so that evolves. And at what point are you creating this seven figure creator program that you've got?
- [02:27]
A
I saw the effects of brand when I worked at Zoom, but after Zoom, I actually left before I started this company and I co founded another company with Michael. I joined his company and we did telecommunications bill sales. I just sat at home and, and I had to make 5,000 cold calls and eventually booked 150 meetings. And we had to go through a long period of sales cycle like having discussions with people to actually sell from cold because it's really, really difficult. Our kind of partnership ended because I wanted to build something bigger and Michael wanted to keep a business small. Still good buddies now. And so I kind of was like, okay, what am I going to do? And I kind of fell into well I'll just cold call for people. And my first client was a recruiter, Adrian from Sydney. I chatted to a few people, I got a few clients, but what I found was that when I'd cold call or cold email and you'd book a meeting for a small business owner, they've never experienced selling from cold, which is a different experience because there's less trust there. And so I found, you know, I'd book 12, you know, 24 meetings for a small business. And they were good meetings with good ideal clients but they couldn't convert. And so after speaking to hundreds of small business owners, I used to do a lot of in person networking. I kind of realized that they don't actually need to book 10 meetings a week, that's too many. They just need a few warm leads that they're having a discussion with. And I just thought, you know, I used to do that, you know, I've done that through LinkedIn. That's not too easy because I'm used to volume stuff. And so we kind of, I just re reach back out to everyone I'd ever chatted to and I said hey, I'm thinking about doing a LinkedIn program. It's going to be six weeks. It's the first time I'm ever doing it. It's about $3,000. Like it's totally new and I'm building it, but I'll give you lifetime access. Do you want to join? And then 25 people joined and then it went really well. They loved it. I don't think it was that good back then, but. And then 18 months later we've just obsessed around the problem, around helping small business owners generate leads themselves on LinkedIn. And skilling themselves up.
- [04:31]
B
This is going to be music to a lot of the ears of our audience because like, okay, LinkedIn is a professional platform. It's more likely that you're going to find prospects there. Less, less scammy kind of things, even though they exist there. So how do we go from content to prospects and conversions? And before we get into the nuts and bolts of it, what is your philosophical take on this? Because you've heard me speak to people like Richard Moore and Yasmin Alec and others and I just want to know conceptually where you align first and then we can get into your actual tactics.
- [05:07]
A
Yeah, sure. So where I align is I don't believe that content is a requirement for selling. I believe that content itself is an accelerant to start more high quality conversations with ideal clients which increase into more revenue for your business itself. And so I believe in an approach that combines content and messaging. But deep down, chatting to probably thousands of creators and small business people, a lot of people shy away from DMing and messaging people purely because of the fear of reaching out. It's like, it's scary to do it. And so I've seen, I worked with a lot of people. I can talk about examples later on, but one person in particular who created content for 18 months and got no clients and it's because they hadn't worked with enough clients to understand what good content looks like with insights to be able to. Then you create content that turns into an accelerant. So I believe they work really well together and brands open so many doors. They're amazing. But I think there's an overemphasis put on brand, especially for people starting out on social media.
- [06:21]
B
How do you want to structure this part? Do you want to tell us like what they're doing wrong or do you just want to get into. Here's what you should do.
- [06:26]
A
Is this someone brand new starting out or is this an established business owner? Because it's different approaches to different people.
- [06:33]
B
So they create content. Currently they have a business, they might. They're probably under five employees and they're probably doing somewhere between 80 to $250,000 in revenue.
- [06:44]
A
Yeah. Are they posting on LinkedIn now?
- [06:46]
B
Yes. I wouldn't say super consistently and they're not getting those kind of results and they don't know how to post. So either the post comes across as super marketing driven or it just becomes. I don't know why I'm reading the story that you're telling me right now.
- [07:00]
A
Yeah, no, that makes sense. If we're talking tactics. The first thing that I would do for any one of that business that size is I'll talk about a client we've got as an example who's similar. So I've got a client. His name is Mundo. He's a financial advisor from the US and he was creating a lot of content before getting a decent amount of leads. Like, he's quite good on LinkedIn, but the issue that he had was he wasn't practically starting enough conversations with people. And so there's a lot of people in the market who want to buy your stuff, and they just need a little nudge from a conversation with you for them to be like, oh, you recognize me? Oh, I want to chat to you. So the first thing I do is, or I advise Tim, is to build a small list of the best ideal clients you've ever worked with past current, who would champion you. And you can build that list in LinkedIn Sales Navigator. The next thing you want to do is find the identical lookalikes of those people using Sales Navigator and then reach out to those people and say, hey, Sawyer, connected with Mundo. I was actually just chatting with him last week. He's a great dude. Crushing on LinkedIn. Thought I'd reach out and connect. So if I was in that position of an established business, I would never go out cold, cold. I would always reference your existing connections, who you've got, and try and find lookalikes. And because you want them to, then look at the other person's profile and be like, oh, yeah, they're just like me. And then you can start a conversation. And because with LinkedIn, you can send about 200 connection requests a week, give or take, if you do personalize those messages like that, you get a very high acceptance. And if we say you get 100 acceptance per week, it's 5200 acceptances per year of ideal clients that you can speak to forever. So before I'd even look at someone's content, I would make sure that that's set up, because if you don't do it for a year, you don't get the credits back, which sucks, which is really unfortunate.
- [09:11]
B
Okay, that's good to know. All right, so now I'm having connections built on LinkedIn.
- [09:17]
A
Yeah.
- [09:18]
B
What is the next step?
- [09:19]
A
The next step after that point is, if I'm an established business, is you need to go through and audit your LinkedIn profile. And it needs to be crystal clear what you do and who you help. And because about 70% of people on LinkedIn view from the mobile phone. A really common mistake is you can't actually read someone's banner and it's really difficult to understand what they do. So if you're saying mundo, as an example, you here would write helping us, us professionals earning more than $200,000 plus to build financial freedom, for example, like that. So if I'm someone in the US earning more than $200,000 and I see his content and I go to his profile, oh, that looks like I am that person. So it's calling out someone as, as the avatar. And then after you've got the profile crystal clear and you know, the banner itself needs to be readable from the mobile phone, the next stage after that is to put something inside your featured section that is some type of a lead magnet or a thing that you give away for free. And it could be, you know, a case study you've had with the previous client, or it could be some piece of value that you actually service with people. But what you want to do is have that sitting there because that's going to act as the litmus test to see how well your content goes in the next step, because it needs to be crystal clear with a next step. I think a mistake that people make is they have a profile that's clear and then they have a calendar booking link. But in real life, it's kind of weird meeting a stranger on social media and then just booking your time with them. It feels kind of weird. So it's like kind of a bit presumptuous. And when you, you would probably know this best if you, Chris, put your calendar out into the world, you'd get a lot of people. But book time, a lot of time wastes, potentially, maybe just people who want to chat to you. So you want to protect your time. But that's the second step. The third step is now that you've got that on your profile, you have a litmus test to see how many people when you post content, who are your ideal client, actually view your profile, and who click on that link and opt in for your free thing, you need those two things set up so that the third piece is when you're posting this content, you want to know, you know, if you post five posts a week, maybe on Friday when you posted, you actually got three people put their email address in. And so then you know, okay, that's the piece of content that attracts leads. Maybe the Monday one got 10,000 impressions, but the Friday one got 2,000 impressions. But that's not the point. If you're a small business owner, you want to drive leads to your business. You want a lot of demand that you can charge higher prices, pay your employees more, life gets better. So they're kind of the three stages. If I'm an existing business owner, what I would look to implement in the business itself.
- [12:20]
B
On LinkedIn, a lot of this is reliant on you having sales Navigator. So people need to pay for that. It is for professionals. Without it, you can't do these strategies, right?
- [12:30]
A
Yes.
- [12:30]
B
First thing is to grow the number of connections that you have such that when you're posting content, the right kind of people are looking at it. So we use Navigator to identify lookalike audiences for your ideal clients. Theoretically, people hang out with people just like them. So you say, I want more people like this. It's going to show it to you. You write a personal note, you connect with some of them, and the good news is you're given a fresh set of connection requests every single week. But if you don't use them, you lose them.
- [12:55]
A
Exactly.
- [12:56]
B
Okay.
- [12:56]
A
Exactly.
- [12:57]
B
Number two is you got to go change your profile to make sure you're clear as to what you do and who you serve. So picking one ideal client avatar and then the next thing is to create some kind of lead magnet where you can capture the email to see what content is converting. You don't want to rush into from content to call to action because it's too abrupt of a step. It's too much tension there. It helps you and the potential customer save a little bit of time. Like are you right for me? Am I right for you? Those are the two things that people are asking themselves. So the lead gen, lead magnet thing, everybody, I think you could just Google that you can figure out what makes sense for you. So something of high value, something demonstrates your expertise, your point of view, so that it's a sample of what you're going to get if you work with each other. Now, the people who sign up for that email or the lead magnet, you've now captured the emails. So it's now the step into like going to do outreach. Those because now it's not cold anymore, it's warm.
- [13:49]
A
Yeah, definitely. It's email list is another strategy like to actually deploy. And I think the biggest mistake people make with an email list, I know this for a fact, is they make their email list too broad. So if I'm say I'm a financial advisor and I only target SaaS account executives that earn more than $200,000 a year, if I call my newsletter Financial tips, it doesn't resonate with that ideal client. So with the lead magnet that you have in the emails, you want to be hyper focused on who is that ideal client. And so when you write the email, you're only addressing that person because let's say you built an email list, you posted AI content and talked about ChatGPT. You might build a 20,000 person email list, but it's of people who are never going to buy from you. But you we've got a client, Loma, who she has an email list of about four or five hundred people, but she helps a very specific niche being national disability insurance providers in Australia. And so when they sign up to her email, when they get her content, it's so hyper relevant that they see her as that key person of influence in that sub niche that when you write the emails then it becomes easy. So, and with good positioning, even if Mundo can help anyone in the US with financial advice, if he just says it's for this person and still says the same thing, you'll listen because you'll just assume that he wrote it for you, even though the advice is probably exactly the same, which I think a lot of people make that mistake. They'll look at really big creators who have a productivity newsletter with 250,000 followers, but. And it's really good and they're very good at what they do, but they're kind of like the 0.01% of people. The other end of the spectrum is like, I agree with Daniel Priestley on this one, is that there's say 200 niches in the world and there's a thousand micro niches under that. You want to pick what micro niche you're serving and start there because the quality of lead will be much better.
- [16:02]
B
That's a good tip on the emails that go out to make sure they're focused on providing value for a very specific avatar.
- [16:08]
A
And.
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B
And now let's take it to the outreach or is it there a CTA inside the email? What is the approach that you recommend?
- [16:17]
A
So if I was starting an email list and I was getting someone to opt in for my lead magnet, I would have set up a 14 day email sequence. This is very tactical and in the first email I'd say, hey, thanks for downloading the free thing. Here it is. Oh, by the way, over the next couple of weeks and we're going to send you some helpful tips based off because I know you're in, you know, you're working in software sales in the US on how to how to save in tax and how to build a financial future as well. So if you don't want to receive them, let me know, but if that's okay, I'll send it through to you and then just say cheers and use that as an opening to then be able to send them emails. Then. What you want to do over the next 14 days is pick the things that your ideal clients are they struggle with the most. So if someone's working in software sales, it might be stock options. They don't understand stock options. Another one might be they want to build, buy an investment property, whatever these things are, and then you want to provide them a lot of value over the next few days, showing that you are the person that can work with them. Because the investment property thing might not resonate with them, but the stock options thing might resonate. And so you tell stories over the next two weeks and saying, hey, stock options is a big thing. I started working with this client, they nearly made this grave mistake. I helped them fix it so they didn't get a big tax bill. I actually put together the strategies. Here it is. If you want it, I'll send you through another email in the next few days. And so you've got 14 days of just quantity, quality, value, solving problems. And then right at the end of 14 days, that's when you post a CTA. But there's a very. There's one thing about CTA is which I don't like, and that's when I believe in. You don't want to pitch people, you want to invite them.
- [18:13]
B
Is that more than just the language you use or is the structure of it very different? Because, so saying, hey, I got a program, et cetera, and this is what it costs. That sounds like a pitch to me.
- [18:24]
A
Yeah.
- [18:25]
B
Versus like saying I'm inviting a couple of people just like you to explore X, Y and Z. It's mostly a language thing, right?
- [18:32]
A
100% language.
- [18:33]
B
Okay.
- [18:34]
A
It's for example, I use. Hey, Chris, I just wanted to double check. I'm going to be working with a couple of private clients next month to help them generate more leads on LinkedIn for their business. If you're interested, let me know. If not, all good. I've got some more valuable emails coming, so I'm kind of making a soft ask to someone. There may be a small percentage where they may be turned off, but for the majority of people, it's not putting them in a situation where they have to answer with this, like hard yes or no. So, like, no, I don't want that. It's like, oh, no thanks. So you're giving them an easy way out and not pressuring them, but you're, you're making an ask and because a lot of people, I get a lot of responses saying, actually that's perfect. It's perfect time. I've been following you three months. Loved your emails. We just lost a big client, a bit worried, so I need to get this sorted. And so it's a different type of interaction you have with someone when you do it.
- [19:28]
B
I understand the sequence so far. It's very permission based, which is what I like. It's like, only do this if it gives you joy. Otherwise I'm good. You're good. Priestly refers to as with or without you energy. I'm gonna talk to a few people who are interested in this. If you are, let me know.
- [19:43]
A
Yeah.
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B
Not more value coming, right?
- [19:46]
A
Yeah.
- [19:46]
B
Okay. Assuming that you haven't written the, the next emails, we'll just keep, we'll just keep down this path of like there's yes and it's advancing the ball for it.
- [19:53]
A
Yeah.
- [19:54]
B
So now are you doing, what's the next step?
- [19:56]
A
I'm not gonna suggest what I do because 99 of people shouldn't do that, but I'll suggest what I suggest clients to do. I believe in using the, if we're doing it by email using the ADA framework, so classic copywriting framework. Attention, desire, interest and then action. So what I would say to them is when I send that email, I'm kind of getting their attention. I'm saying, hey, I'm doing this cool thing. It could be a workshop, it could be an in person event, a dinner, anything. I'm doing this cool thing. Just want to check if you want to join their response. If someone is interested, they say, hey, sounds pretty cool, I'm interested. That's interest. Then we've got desire. This is when you shoot through an offer doc. An offer doc, I like to think of it as. It's a sales letter which is written to communicate the value of what you do through hopefully expressing problems that they have to potentially take a next step. So the sales letter would say, hey, next month I'm going to work with a small group of private people. We're going to be doing this thing. It's perfect for these types of people who've dealt with this. It's not good for these types of people. So this is. You probably not interested. Here's what we're going to cover. If you're interested, just reply back interested and we'll just set up a chat. And so that's usually. I usually send that in a notion Doc or you could do a Google Doc or any other tool. I prefer to use Notion or Google over PDF slides because if we get PDFs we tend to skip through them and not read. But if we get sent a notion or a Google Doc, it feels more intimate. And so it's like a letter that I'm reading and you know, I'm writing it for a very specific person. So I want to say if you're this person, it's not good for you because if you can't help them win, you shouldn't try to solve to the person if you can't help them win. And then CTA is like, just reply back, yeah, interested and I'll come back with you sometimes. So that's. And I was like, desire. So you're creating this desire with. If they are the ideal client, this offer doc is desire. And then the action that the other person has to do again is permission based reply back, yeah, interested. And then after that you say, awesome. So you're in this time zone if you're tomorrow at 9 or 11am I very much prefer to suggest times than send a calendar link to someone you're trying to eventually sell to just because you want to make the process as easy as possible for them. I sometimes find it a bit weird when, you know, someone says, yeah, just booking a time and then I click in, click on it, and then there's like two available slots at two in the morning and I'm like, oh, this is a bit weird. And then my doorbell rings, my dog starts barking, there's a delivery, ah, it's too hard, I'll do it later. So try to make it as easy, easy as possible for the other person to set up a time. And I enjoy seeing what time zone they're in, doing the math and suggesting a few times for them. Because when you suggest those times, the rule of reciprocity kicks in for the other person. So if those times don't work naturally, human psychology, they'll feel that, oh, Matt suggested some times to me, they don't work. Or I'll suggest some times back to him. And then if they do give you the time, that's when you take their email, you add it to your Google Calendar or your calendly and you send them the invite of the information. So the. I like how Yasmin Alec puts this with content. He quotes the term don't make them think. And I love that Similar in sales. You don't want to make them think, make it the easiest process ever. So they feel like when they get on that call it was kind of effortless instead of less friction effortless.
- [23:40]
B
They booked the call. You've given them one or two or three options, you know, making them think. Yeah. And now you're on that call.
- [23:48]
A
Yeah.
- [23:48]
B
Okay, now what?
- [23:49]
A
Yeah, what are we selling here? It depends on what we're selling. So if we're selling to a small business owner or an enterprise, like what's the. Because I have different suggestions for each person.
- [24:01]
B
Go with the one that's most common.
- [24:02]
A
If you're selling to a small business owner, if they're interested and they set up a zoom meeting. It depends on the price point of your thing of the action that you will do. So if you're. We've got a client, Josh Lowman, he sells things for about a hundred grand. He's not going to try and sell in the first meeting. So the first meeting sale is purely dependent on the price of the thing and usually the authority that you have in this space as well. So you know, if you have a lot of authority like you know, you could probably sell something more expensive on one call. But I'd probably suggest against it. Now if we've got the decision maker on the call and they booked it in, I look at the pre call work first. So before the actual call itself I'd say, hey, really looking forward to the call. I've been chatting to my team. I've actually prepared some extra insights and stuff I want to send to you. Have a watch of this video beforehand. It goes through exactly how we help clients. I'd pick something that's 10 to 15 minutes long, not too long. It's a pre meeting VSL and it just talks through how you help other clients. So that's pre call. I'd also do a bit of research. I've got a checklist for this where I'd look at are they connected to anyone I know? Are they from a city I know, what pieces of commonality do we have together that I can build with rapport on the actual call itself. And so but making them feel that hey, I've gone to this extra effort and I researched and let them know that I'm excited for it. And I wouldn't send them and I'd send automated reminders but it's much better to send a manual reminder or a voice note letting them know you did extra work because that then makes them feel, oh, actually I'm looking forward to this call because I don't think anyone reads like calendly link invites anymore. Like it's we just, our brain just turns off. But when someone sends you a really nice text message or a voice note, hey, I'm really looking forward to speaking. I've prepared some extra things for you and I've been chatting to the team. It makes you feel special. And so when you feel special, you're like, oh, I actually really do want to come to this call. So a lot of the work is done pre call before you actually get on there. I can stop now if we want to go into any of that before we get onto the call if you'd like. Happy to.
- [26:23]
B
Yeah, I'd love to.
- [26:24]
A
Yeah.
- [26:25]
B
You're literally walking us step by step. So if people are listening to this, look, don't stress out because you can watch this multiple times or listen to this again and again until this makes sense. In just a few months, we're going to hit our 400th episode of this podcast. And before we get there, we want to take a moment to really listen to you, our loyal listeners. If you're open to chatting with my producer, Rich Cardona, or someone on his team, we'd love to hear from you. Just fill out the short form in the show notes. It takes less than 20 seconds.
- [26:55]
A
The next step is now we're getting on the call. Let's assume that it's something that's $5,000 or maybe $4,000. I like selling something on an initial call that is a perceived one off instead of something that's really expensive and retainer based. Just because people tend to pay about three times as much for something that's a perceived one off compared to a retainer. And a retainer is like a commitment. It's kind of like if my partner says, hey, I want to watch this TV series and I look and I say it's 20 episodes. And I'm like, oh, this is going to take up our Sunday. It's going to be hard versus, hey, can we watch this movie? It's like going to be good. It's like a less of a commitment. So, you know, it's free for me to watch, but it takes up my time. And so going into the call, let's say it's 3 to $5,000 perceived one off. How I'd structure the call in the beginning is pre framing is like really important. I just say, hey Chris, like really looking forward to chatting with you today. Like, the whole purpose of this goal is I just want to ask you some questions and really get to understand your business to see if we can even help. And if we can help, and we both think we might be able to, I'll present you with a couple of options at the end and we can talk through and if it seems like a good fit, we can just get started working together immediately. Is that okay with you? And so starting with a permission and they usually say, yeah, I'd love that. Then I'd say, look, and at any time, Chris, if you want to stop me and ask any questions, I'm completely fine, take it off, it's all good. And someone will say yes, they'll never stop you. It won't happen. And I just let them know, look, and I've got an hour today. I've got something else on after that I've got planned I've got to get to. So I hope we can just keep to time. Is that okay? I'll say, yeah, because you always want to respect your own time. Like if, if you hang on the call for an extra hour, if they get that sense of desperation with you, they immediately in their mind, like the status drops and they say, oh, you need this. So they like, oh, what can I do in this situation? So having that pre frame at the beginning, it helps people drop their guard. So they are willing to open up because they're like, oh, I feel less pressure. And so then I'd say, if we're going to have, say, an hour call for a $5,000 thing, I'd spend, you know, the first 20, 30 minutes really understanding their problems, asking them questions. And I'd try to stretch the gap of where they are now and where they want to be. What are the issues of what's holding them back? Why do you think we're a good fit to work together? After the 30 minutes, I want them arguing that I need this, like I need this thing. And you can kind of flip it back to them through questions. They've got a kind of a whole question list. And then let's say 30 minutes has passed, we say, hey, Chris, like, this is great. I think we might be able to help you. Is it okay now? You know, unless you got any questions I can walk through now, I've actually got a deck. It has all the information. It talks about this. And then I can present you the couple options. Is that okay? And then usually they'll say a few questions before that. Now, you know, ask a couple of things. You'll clear them up and then you want to Take them through like a pitch deck that just kind of walks through what you do, how you help people. You want to make it less about you and more about them. Sometimes I, when I used to do this in the past, I'd customize the pitch deck based off what they say or what they're going to say. So, you know, you mentioned this in the chat, you know, all these kind of things. And then before I get to the price, I want to make sure there's no other questions. So before we get to the pricing, I'm say like, hey, Chris, like, I just want to double check, like, is there anything else that's missing? Anything else you wanted to cover off? I'd ask the question three times because a lot of times, and I'd really be like, no, no, I want to answer everything. I want to get back to you. And usually that you want them to say a couple of things because there's always a couple of things in their mind that they can do it. And I'd ask them questions like, hey, like, if it seems like a good fit, like, do you think it is? Like, if it seems a good fit, do you want to get started working together straight away? If it's possible and you want them to kind of like, yeah, if it seems like it's good, it's great. And so I like objection handling to an extent, but I much prefer the pre. Objection handling. Like pre handling the objection. So someone that I really don't like when salespeople use psychological manipulation to make someone feel guilty to not buy the thing. It's just. And really well trained salespeople can do it. I'm really not, not into that. I'd rather them make the decision because you get a much better customer. Customer anyway. You'll get someone who wants a refund later on. But then when we get to the actual price, that's when you present the options. And so to make this the most simple thing possible, if I'm selling something that's $4,000, I always want to price anchor with something really expensive. So if I'm selling something for grand, I also want to have something for 15,000. Only two options. My goal is I only want someone to buy the four. But the $15,000 thing, the only difference is it has more of my time. And what that does in the person's brain is they look at the options. You present them both as really great options that they could take them, but the one that's 15 grand might have four more hours of your time. So in their mind they do the math and they're like, oh man, you're worth like $200,000 an hour. Wow, that's like, okay, okay. And then you kind of, you try to pitch both. A very small percentage will want the top one. And I've done that before. Like we had a client that paid me a lot of money for two month engagement and they were super happy to do it cause we presented it to them. But most of the people will take the other option. So you're price anchoring to make the other thing look better priced. And then after that I can talk through, but then you're kind of just having the discussion. Cool. Does this seem like a good fit? Should we get started now? I can onboard you and I can get the calendar link set out like tomorrow and we can literally start onboarding immediately if you've got time. Or I can hand you over to my csm, we can do that then or whatever. And if they're like, yeah, cool, before I send the stripe link to pay, don't send them the stripe link. You need them to emotionally commit. So then I would say, awesome, Chris, like I'm so excited to work with you. What are you most looking forward to? And then I want them to drill down and be like, I'm looking forward to doing better content. I've been working on it so hard. I'm really looking forward to doing my profile. I'm really looking forward to being in a community. Oh man, what else are you looking forward to? I want them to emotionally commit because when people pull out the credit card, even the stripe link, it's like really, it's a scary thing. And I'd be like, cool, that's amazing. I'm really excited working for you. Cool. I'm going to send you the link to your mobile phone right now to enroll. The reason you do mobile phone is because people have Apple pay their computer. A lot of the time, stuff's up, they'll get something happens in, you know, Google Chrome doesn't work. I send it to their phone because they can just double click if they got an Apple. I'm sure Android's a bit similar. And then they just hit accept payment. And then when they accept, Chris, so excited to work with you. Cool. We've got an extra 15 minutes now. Let's just get you set up. And then I'd onboard them like immediately then and there because I want them to feel really good about the purchase and you know, maybe if I can't onboard them now, I'm going to book into time to meet them tomorrow. I'm going to give them access. I'm going to give them all the material. I want them psyched because in that first 24 hours, like, that's when people can get decision analysis paralysis. So I really want to get them psyched to join and really excited. I'll introduce them to a team member, you know, hey, Chris. Hey, Ewan. Chris is going to join us. Really excited. Can you set up the onboarding time with him? So I want to make the experience that they have in buying a reflection of, like, how we help people and, like, how to actually take them through the process. So I know there's a lot there, but I want to take you through the whole thing.
- [34:54]
B
Yeah, that was. You kind of took me from beginning to end there, I think so. That was very thorough. I didn't hear anything that threw me off. Like, that's not going to work. So clearly you've done this a couple of times before.
- [35:07]
A
A few times, yeah.
- [35:08]
B
Just a few times. Okay. Where do people usually get stuck in this? And it seems like it's pretty clear to me. And I have to admit, oftentimes I have a hard time imagining where someone's going to f this part up. So where did they usually fail in implementing this exact process for most businesses?
- [35:24]
A
Again, I probably agree with Daniel Priestley on too many things, but I believe the first thing you want to solve in your business is lead generation. It's if you have a lack of leads, then when you get on a call, you need the money, you need the clients. Naturally you do things that are more desperate that, you know, Chris Voss talks about in a negotiation, like, you know, where you need to be. Usually when you get in that negotiation in a period of desperation, it's like you're going to lose. Usually. I found that if you solve the lead problem first and you have an overabundance of leads and an overabundance of people talking to you, you don't need to remember tactics. You just do the right thing. So when you're really busy and someone calls you say, hey. Or someone DMs you on LinkedIn, says, hey, I'm interested in your thing. If you don't reply to them for a day and then you come back the next day and you say, chris, I'm so sorry. Like, I've just been really busy with client work. It's been really amazing. Yeah, I'd be happy to chat with you. I can't chat till next week. Is that okay? Do you want to pencil IT in now. Love to chat. I can send you through some information and resources beforehand. I'm not faking scarcity there. It's real. And so if you solve the leads problem, then it turns into a sales problem, then it turns into an operations problem. But I've found that especially with small businesses, they focus too much on how do we make our delivery better, how do we make our product better, how do we make this thing better? Because the leads thing is kind of cringe. It's like not the thing that people like doing, because waking up to an inbox full of rejection is not fun, but creating content, so fun. It's extremely fun. And so trying to focus on that first, I found solves most of the issues. So, like, you do those things that I mentioned in the sales process, you wouldn't think about it. You just do it automatically because that's how you feel throughout the. Throughout the actual process itself.
- [37:26]
B
Yeah. Makes a lot of sense. Okay, let's spend some time, the remaining time talking about generating leads. I'm with you. Because if you have a queue of people waiting to talk to you.
- [37:36]
A
Yeah.
- [37:37]
B
You can F up pretty much everything else at that point because there will be another one and your energy will be different, your mindset, your desperation will fade because you're like thinking, how do I even deliver on all these? You can't. So what have you found that works now? Let's assume they've done the work. They've grown their profiles or connection requests with the right kinds of people. So the probability of somebody that they want to talk to is seeing their. Their. Their content in their feed. Okay, what kind of content's going to work here?
- [38:05]
A
A big problem that a lot of businesses have is they actually have a lot of leads right now. They just don't reach out to them. It's a big issue. And the impact is they'll think that I need to go out and get new leads when I could have a lot of leads. And so the solution is, it's actually the first thing you want to do is go back into your actual list of people you're connected with. As an existing business owner, the first thing you want to run is, I like to call it an offer campaign. So you might have an email list hold in a bunch of people, people in your CRM. It's just making a proactive invite to them. And it could be, hey, hey, Bill. We're going to be working with a couple more clients this month to solve this problem. Just wanted to check if you might be interested if not, it's all good. Because I remember the last time we were chatting you said that that was an issue. Or you could say, hey Bill, we're actually getting a few clients together. We're releasing this new product. I wanted to invite you to a private only event in person or in zoom. Just wanted to check if you might actually be interested. So that's like the very, very first thing. Because a small business, if they've been around for five years, they have so much goodwill built up because they usually haven't made any asks to their current clients. So if they take the invite method, like, you know, I've had clients, I remember I worked with a creator, he's got, I won't name him, but like he has about 60,000 followers now or maybe 70,000. And I started working with him, he was making about $13,000 a month. And so he's pretty good, but he had a lot of followers. All I told him to do was hey dude, just run offer campaigns and then just DM more people and make offers. 5 months later he made 96k in a month as a solo. That was the only change he made. And so the DM in making invites and doing it on a cadence. So I like to do a monthly cadence. And you might switch between, you know, event offer, you know, dinner, or maybe you go to Avatar 1, Avatar 2, Avatar 3, and you rotate between who they are because as time goes on, you build a bigger email list, you get more followers, you connect with people proactively or they connect with you. Your trust equity builds over time.
- [40:26]
B
I think oftentimes we do make this mistake. I'm speaking about us personally, where we have so many leads, so many people have expressed interest, but yeah, for one reason or another, they didn't convert. Yeah, I like this terminology. Where do we drop the ball? How do we mess this up so that we can kind of learn, if nothing else but just reignite the conversation? And so you're talking about having some kind of system so that you're not trying to do it all at the same time to the same group. So break the groups down, do different things that might get the conversation started again. And you're saying for this one example where this person was only doing X sales per month, turned it into five, six times the sales. Right?
- [41:08]
A
Yeah.
- [41:08]
B
Okay, let me ask you this. I'm going to ask a very selfish question.
- [41:11]
A
Sometimes I do this, happy to answer.
- [41:13]
B
I run a group, it's called the program. Yeah, it's 250 bucks a month and we have a lot of people who've expressed interest, but not so many current members in it right now.
- [41:23]
A
Yeah.
- [41:24]
B
So we have 277 members. What is Something is a group coaching program. What could I do to have this thing where I'm kind of reigniting the conversation? We have about 100,000 people on our email list. A much bigger following elsewhere, but huge following.
- [41:38]
A
Yeah, yeah.
- [41:39]
B
On socials, but a hundred thousand ish on our email list. But not all of them are meant to be. So let's just say. Let's say we have 20,000 people who might be a good fit for this. How do we reignite that conversation?
- [41:49]
A
I did a bit of research before this call. So look through your landing pages and stuff. And so I thought you might ask this. What's the process now of how you sell people in? Because when I went to your LinkedIn, I clicked through the featured section, I looked at the landing pages, there was a couple of things. One that was 5,000, one that was $250 a month, and then it's 2,500 a year. What's the process that someone goes through and purchases that now?
- [42:12]
B
Very good question. So if our audience is listening to us far and you're like rolling your eyes, like, this is not of interest to me. Okay, cool. Take a minute, take a break, go get some coffee, use the facilities, whatever, and then come back. We'll get right back into this, but I want to make it super concrete. Okay. So typically how we do this, and I'm not a salesperson per se, I'm not like a marketer, I create content, I'm an educator. So the way we do things is we create events. We can create a webinar or something where we're going to teach you something or give you resources. And sometimes the way we teach is through a multi chain email thing with resources and that's it. And then at a certain point, you're invited because the doors open up and there's an enrollment period. We've gone from doing it monthly to once a quarter, and now we're back to once a month. Because once a quarter put a lot of pressure on us closing a lot of people. It was a do or die thing and we weren't executing properly.
- [43:05]
A
Yeah.
- [43:06]
B
And so once they get into the webinar, especially if they're stuck, I don't consider $250 a month a high ticket thing. So it should be pretty transactional at that point. But if somebody needed to, they would talk to Carrie, who's our salesperson and then they would do a 15 minute conversation with her and she would answer questions, deal with objections and then determine if this is a good fit or a bad fit. Now prior to this year we had more programs and so there was a lot more decision making process. So we would send them through a score app which they would then receive a score and have a different path depending on what it is that where they were in their business. So it was a little bit more complicated.
- [43:43]
A
If I was you with your brand, you could just send an offer email with an offer doc and you'll probably have a lot of people buy it. That's, that's just from. So okay. Even, even without an event, just the first thing. And I'll kind of go into events next if you send an email that said, you know, hey creative, I'm going to be working with a couple of private clients next month to help them out. Come out, come out, come. We work to be working with a few people now. I just want to check if you'd like to join us. You would probably get like 500 plus most likely. And then so then if you'd have an offer doc that was. Can you need an offer doc that's constructed well then a reply getting them to then join. Because your entry cost at 250amonth is, is really easy entry. And so like my other perception of this is that your brand is so strong. Like I would maybe feel that if it's 250amonth it may be not expensive enough.
- [44:46]
B
Agreed.
- [44:46]
A
Like, and so like I pay a coach and I'm in a group program that's 400 $500 a month and you have a much bigger brand than they do. I won't name who it is, but you have a much bigger brand. But they sell a lot just through these like offer docs as well and just through actually constructing that. So I would say like that'd probably be something you could experiment and run with. And it's just making sure that when the email comes through that you have someone practically then asking and having conversations. Because sometimes people like 100% Chris, I mean and then they pay and then they're in. Or sometimes they're like I've got a few objections. So you've got to go back and forth and track them in a CRM and have a conversation with them. And they may also want a sales call for your price. I don't think so at all. Like they wouldn't need it if I was going to host an event like you do I would look at whatever event that you host. It's going to solve a very specific pain point that creative agency owners have. And it might be sales process lead generation, something where you're known as a key person of influence. And I'd pick one very specific thing and solve it for them. On these events, I've got a buddy, Luke. He's probably the best sales guy I know. He's done hundreds of millions of dollars of sales through his business and other stuff. He does events like this. The key to events is having a conversation with somebody before the event saying, hey, really psyched you're going to be at the event. We're actually looking to set up some calls afterwards to see if you potentially want to join and chat to us. Would you like to set up a call now? So the actual event acts as the trust building conversion point, but the pre and post event is a lot of the time where the sales happen because there's only one Russell Brunson in this world and he's a lord at selling by webinars. But for us mere mortals to run through that sales process like he does, and so methodical and get someone to give you money at the end, I've never been able to do it, ever. The most success I've had is they join because they're interested in solving the problem. Like, I've got a few clients that do this as well. They have a really good chat with them before they meet. They see that you've got a lot of people there. I would probably have the event as a zoom call, not a webinar, because then everyone can see everyone else there and they get all excited, put them in breakout rooms. They meet each other. You just point. Like, I'd point. I point to people. I'm like, yo, Darren, what's going on? I've been seeing you on LinkedIn. Your post epic. And so make it like really fun. And then I'd make the CTA of like, hey guys, we chatted you before. Just book a call if you want to talk about it. If you just want to jump in now, we can do the onboarding next week. That's totally sweet. And I'd make it less of a sell and more of a, like a fun experience for people. And when you have like it on zoom and there's. I've got a client, Katie. She's a career coach and we've been coaching on the same thing. She's. She had like a record month last night, which was amazing. But her issue was that she wasn't doing the pre and post work, chatting to people and. But she really has it on a zoom meeting and invites a lot of people, even though some people aren't a good fit. Just because it brings up the vibe and like the. You already have such a strong brand, but, like, it brings it up even more. It's like there's all these people that are so keen and so people kind of FOMO trickles in, or they're like, oh, I want to join together. And so a lot of it comes around the event and even if someone comes every month and they might join, they're still adding to the social proof that's actually happening. But when you get on a webinar, it's like everyone's like, you can't, like, see anyone. It's kind of weird. You kind of talk to yourself. It's like, right. You know, it's a bit different as well.
- [48:25]
B
Yeah. So we, we have a challenger. But first, I just want to acknowledge that some of these tips that you're giving make a lot of sense. It's not things that I thought about.
- [48:36]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [48:37]
B
And so that speaks volumes about your ability to do this and how you know what to do.
- [48:41]
A
Thank you. I appreciate it.
- [48:42]
B
This, just this idea of having a call saying, we're going to do this event, it's going to be fun, come join us. We're going to help you with a specific problem, but do you want to lock in a time to talk to somebody afterwards? Because you're getting a lot of kind of engagement and commitment before they even go to the thing.
- [48:56]
A
Yeah.
- [48:57]
B
And you're right. When we, when we invite people to the events and we teach something, it's, it's, it's a lot harder to convert them at that point. So. Yeah, I like this. And this, this reminds me of like, when you go to a trade show.
- [49:08]
A
Yeah.
- [49:09]
B
And they're like, oh, we see you're going to be at the trade show. Should we set up a time for us to go and meet? So they're kind of already getting your commitment or level of interest. They're not wasting a lot of time there. Right. And so I like that a lot. And it's, it's not aggressive, it's not predatory. And so far you've not said anything as a sales person where I'm like, well, that's, I'm not going to do that. That's terrible.
- [49:32]
A
Yeah.
- [49:32]
B
So it's very hard for you to, like, get through that series of mental checks. In my mind, like, no, that's creepy. I would want, I want to want to do this. So so far so good. You're very high score right now.
- [49:46]
A
Thank you.
- [49:46]
B
Fun experience. We do this. One of these technical challenges I have is we have a good size, really engaged audience that are incapable of buying anything that we do. They will show up to these things in droves. But they're all, I wouldn't say they're all, a vast majority of them are not the right fit. And I also want to acknowledge we've come to the realization when I say we, I've admitted to myself now the price point to do this is not the right price point to attract the right people. Like you said, you're in a program that's four and a half thousand dollars a month. I think I know what the program that is. And at 500 bucks a month or 250amonth, it's not enough. So what we're doing is we're actually planning on raising the price every benchmark we hit so that we get it to the price point where it needs to be.
- [50:28]
A
I think what's happening nowadays is there's Sam Ovens and Alex Somozu teamed up and they opened school communities. And so there's all these school communities which opening up and they're like $100 a month each. And so there's kind of this, there's this price point that exists where $200 a month is enough that they can just pay to access. But the, the opposite side of things is when people don't pay, they don't pay attention. So my four and a half thousand dollars a month thing I use, I definitely use it. Like I make sure I go to all the events, the in person things and I feel very involved. But also when people pay a certain level, I have two tiers of program. So I have six figure creators and seven figure creators. Seven figure creators, you can only get in if you graduate from 6 or I interview you. And so there's only like 12 people in there, but they all pay. I think it's like $1,300 USD a month and they commit for 12 months. After the first two months we give them just a love it or leave it policy. Hey, you either love it, we make you a lot of money or you leave. So. And there's a lot of creators in there who have like, I won't mention their names because it might stuff their credibility or whatever. But you know, in six figure creators like there's a different caliber of people in there compared to seven and so sometimes by charging a higher price, you attract the people that you want to work with. And it's really hard to say this because I'm like a champion for all entrepreneurs, but when you first start out, it's disgustingly hard. Like, no one can prepare you for how hard it is, like, at all. And. But when you've been doing it for a period of time, you have consistent revenue. You're doing it just by the fact that you've done it for so long, you can see where to go. And so they usually turn into, like, implementers, and so they need less course and less material, and they just want more direction. So for our second tier program, it's just a WhatsApp group and I have two calls a week, and I get on the call and we literally just share screen and just do stuff. And, like, you know, if they walk away from somewhere, like, you know, and they close a few more deals because of it, perfect. Like, that's like the ultimate goal. Like, we had one creator join, and he's. He's a big creator. He coaches agency owners. All I did was help him tighten up his positioning. His offer got him to run an offer campaign, made 70 grand in five weeks. And I found that when you have a high brand, you can charge more for. For something that actually requires less of your time. And so trying to cater for the, like. I think the only person I've ever seen do this well and who's got a really good program and stuff is Justin Welsh. What he does is amazing. Like, but he's like, gone to the moon. Like, only a few people do that. And so it's so difficult to replicate. And I actually find it easier to charge more money than charging less, as weird as that is.
- [53:21]
B
It's not that weird.
- [53:23]
A
Yeah.
- [53:24]
B
The reason why is when people have achieved a certain level of success.
- [53:28]
A
Yeah.
- [53:29]
B
They can win with big ideas and not, let's roll up our sleeves and do three weeks worth of work.
- [53:36]
A
Yeah.
- [53:37]
B
I'm in that position myself, and I naturally assume people are like that. But people at a certain tier, there's not a judgment on anybody. It's like, you still have to go through the process. And when you're in an advanced kind of masterclass level, one phrase, one key concept can be enough for you to generate a million dollars of new revenue.
- [53:55]
A
It's.
- [53:55]
B
Right.
- [53:56]
A
It's pretty. It's. It's really hard because when I started, like, I was a sales pro, I was number one in the world at Zoom. Out of 150 people in six months. I was very good at sales. Promoted three times in three years. Still, when I left and started my own thing, I lost like 180 grand in eight months. Like, literally, like, and, and just because, you know, know I bought HubSpot Enterprise, I did all the wrong things. And so, like, I fully, totally feel with people starting out and something just happens with consistency and when you just do it over time that you just get this clarity. It's hard to explain on knowing what to do. And then everyone says, you know, getting to the first million is the hardest. A hundred percent first, a hundred K is the hardest. But then past that point, it's kind of like, like, I got a buddy who does. He does about 20 million a year. He has a coaching business. And, you know, we. I chatted to him and he's had it for four and a half years. He sold it to half of it to private equity, which is amazing for a coaching program. But we chatted and he's like, yeah, dude, I just ate. You know, whatever. For the first two years, it was terrible. And then I got to my million and I was like, oh, saw the light. And then he scoured from a million to 20 in like, I think it was like three years or something. So it's just the first stages are just like, so hard. But when you work with people who are, who progress through, it kind of becomes easier because you're like, exactly like you said. Oh, just like, like. I had a call with an agency owner. He does $300,000 a month and he's. There's two of them, co founders. They do a D2C kind of ads agency. Like, we had an onboarding call into seven figure creators, and I literally, I looked through what he was doing. I was like, all right, dude, all you got to do is just DM some more people, send some more emails, and that's it. That was the call. He's like, cool. Got my money's worth, just makes more money. So it's just. It's just a different thing that you're catering for.
- [55:42]
B
We're a little over an hour into this episode. We are, and I've enjoyed the conversation. I want to make sure we have closure to what we're saying. But I think this is probably part one of maybe multiple conversations with you.
- [55:55]
A
Excited? Yeah.
- [55:56]
B
So let's, let's, like, let's land the plane where you want to land it. So you've taken us through this entire process up into the sales call, and is there anything else that we need to say to this. So this feels like a complete meal.
- [56:08]
A
Anyone's, anyone who's watching, maybe we can land it off this. But just one thing I want to say is that say whenever you watch sales videos and you watch Alex or Mosey or someone amazing do sales, you watch a two hour video and you watch it and you're like, I get it. I actually totally understand what they're saying. And you know me, I failed math at school. Terrible. And so if I watch a physics video, there's levels that I need to get to the point of, to even conceptualize what's going on. The hard thing about sales and also copywriting and persuasion, because it's so simple, everyone thinks that they can very easily do it. And it also feels a little bit prehistoric, like it's too easy. But it's kind of like doing those repetitive motions over and over again and getting it right into the habit kind of makes you win. But a lot of people I've chatted to, especially from corporate and stuff like that, it feels like they're downgrading to like basic level kindergarten, which it kind of is. But just because it is easy to understand and conceptualize doesn't mean that it's hard to practice. But the really positive thing is that if you take away, even if you take away from this conversation, I'm going to pre frame the call and say, hey, I don't even know if I can help you. I'm just going to ask a few questions to check how and if I can. Let's present the offer. Even if you just do that, usually people are used to such a poor sales experience that one tiny thing that you do just makes them feel comfortable and then they won't care if you don't have price anchoring or this or like it doesn't matter or you don't, you know, do all these different things. It's just you just need to actively put in a couple of things to make someone feel comfortable and then they won't think about you as that really dodgy salesperson, even if you make some mistakes as well throughout. So I just wanted to say that just because a lot of people hear these or they'll watch. Alex Hormozi has a three hour sales masterclass. You watch the whole thing and you're like, but you don't do anything because you're like, I don't know which thing to do. You just need to take a couple of things and just implement them and you'll be better than 99% of other people, right?
- [58:13]
B
So you're listening to this in your car and you're like I'm excited. Where should we send people?
- [58:20]
A
Probably the easiest thing to send people to. I've probably put out like 30 hours of YouTube content that's just free and it's just, it's the most tactical sales advice ever. I'd suggest going there and like also we have a free five day course on how to sell on LinkedIn. 6,000 people have done it now. I actually took it out of our paid program because my whole goal in that is I say in the email, hey, I don't want you to join our pay program yet. Follow this, get your clients then join.
- [58:48]
B
Okay, so we'll include for those of you that want to dig into the to the notes and the descriptions of either the podcast or the YouTube episode, they'll be down below seven figure creators.com Did I say that right?
- [59:00]
A
Yeah, that's it.