Today I’m sharing a conversation I had with one of my clients. His name is Craig and we’re discussing how to craft your backend offer and a step by step guide to a funnel that will attract your ideal client.
I’m going to do a deep-dive with Craig and give him tips and suggestions as to how to grow his audience and his sales.
Craig’s Website is: https://craigwear.com/
ROB: Craig, can you tell us a bit about yourself and who it is you serve?
CRAIG: Sure! And by the way, thank you so much for doing this. I truly hope someone finds value in this.
I’ve been a certified financial planner for 32 years and I’ve always been fee-based and independent. I’ve never worked for any of the big brokerage houses or the wirehouses.
I got into the business because I really wanted to help people put together the pieces of their life.
For most of my career, I did very little marketing. I spent a lot of time investing in my family and especially my boys.
About eight to ten years ago we really cranked it up.
I had a talk show in the Houston market, I wrote magazine articles, did a lot of events, and a handful of other things that eventually 10x’d my business within about 6 years.
ROB: I love it. Congrats.
CRAIG: Thank you. It was doing a lot of those things consistently that over a handful of years that I discovered I saw a huge problem.
It wasn’t a big deal until a client in his 70’s came to me. He had a $2 million IRA and his distributions that the government makes you take after age 70 and a half were far greater than anything he was ever going to need and it was a big problem.
He was having to take $100,000 a year in distributions and he only needed about $20,000 of it.
I started to look at my other clients and wanted to know how we could avoid the same situation for them.
I realized that the majority of my clients were in a similar position. The numbers weren’t necessarily the same, but they were also being forced to take money out that they didn’t need. Then, when they needed money, they were going to have to pay a tax on everything.
So I started to develop some internal tools and mechanics that helped us evaluate whether they could benefit from some other strategies.
My ideal demographic were those between age 50 to about 75 years old, wealthy or not wealthy. Their income levels don’t matter. The problem exists when people save exclusively or too much into before tax accounts.
ROB: Great. That totally gives us an idea of who it is you serve and what your client demographic looks like. Now can you take me through your offers?
CRAIG: We’ve got a book that is called “Paying the Piper: Tax Traps Hidden in your 401k and IRA.” It goes over what the problem is, I undress some of the common misconceptions about 401ks and IRAs, and I list out the seven tax traps you will run into when you get into your mid to late ’60s.
ROB: So what other offers do you have in addition to the book?
CRAIG: We have a live online training which is a kind of group coaching situation over the course of six weeks.
ROB: How are you helping people in six weeks? What’s the breakthrough solution they’re going to get?
CRAIG: They’re going to learn to identify the problems they have if they have them, how large they are, and the strategies they can employ without me if they want to.
There’s an interactive worksheet they can take to their financial advisor or CPA so they can show them the facts.
ROB: At the moment you have that group training at $990?
CRAIG: That’s correct.
ROB: You mentioned to me before this interview that that is essentially a placeholder, right? Where do you want this to go?
CRAIG: If I choose to believe that online training is a place where potential clients can get to know me, I think that price could be any number. I would really love to get to a $5,000, one on one consulting offer.
ROB: This one on one consulting, what are the limits? How many sessions would they get? Is it over a certain period of time? Etc.
CRAIG: I would initially start with an intro call where I can learn more about them and understand what their needs are. From there I’ll put together a game plan using the strategies I’ve developed so I can come back to them with a step by step plan to achieve the results they want.
Then we’ll have another call where I undress each point so they have a great understanding of what needs to be done.
I would spend however much time they need, within some limits because I’ve done things like this before and it can be dragged out into looking at their investment portfolio or all kinds of other things they’re doing.
So I want to be strict on the front end but open on the backend.
ROB: The first thing people tend to sell too much of their time.
To be quite honest, I don’t know that people are really interested in spending a ton of time with someone. They’re interested in getting a result. So if your offer is result-based and it can be guaranteed, that’s even better.
CRAIG: Right, so I could put a 100% refund on the deal.
ROB: Absolutely. I would also guarantee a nice number, such as $100,000 saved in lifetime taxes or it’s free and I’ll give you your $5,000 back if that’s something you could offer.
That makes it a no brainer.
You’d be reversing the risk, which is what you always want to do with an offer.
I’m getting ahead of myself but it’s at least worthwhile to consider.
When I was putting together our program, I came up with the idea of making the Best Seller “thing” guaranteed. Then when we added PR and media to our services we offer to our clients, I was able to guarantee that for our clients.
Most people don’t do that. Most companies don’t do that.
If you can reverse the risk for your client and tell them not only are we going to do all of these things for you, but I”m guaranteeing the result that you’re going to get, you’ll make it so much easier for that person to invest in you with confidence.
If you don’t have something that works, then you need to fix that first of course.
If you do have something that works, you’ll see that people will come flocking to it.
But again, I’m getting ahead of myself.
So walk me through your funnel. You have step one, which is your book. That’s really your lead magnet/attraction device right?
I would suggest that you be cautious with your title in that regard as well because you don’t want it to be too generic. In fact, you want to make it as specific as possible to attract your ideal client into your world.
The more specific you can be in your title and subtitle, the better results you’ll receive. You don’t want people coming into your funnel who aren’t the right client because it will cost you money.
I lose a considerable amount of money with my book “Publish, Promote, Profit” because all of the profits come from the backend for us.
That’s going to be true with your offers.
Craig and I daresay most of you reading this, probably want to have a high ticket offer. So let’s talk about the funnel and some of the strategic elements of this before we dive into the specifics.
Step number one, when it comes to your book, you’re going to need a system that’s occurring on a regular basis to put your book in front of your ideal client.
Craig, I’m assuming that your idea is to use some type of online marketing to drive people to a page where they have the opportunity to get your book. Is that correct? Or do you have something else in mind to sell your book?
CRAIG: That is the primary way.
ROB: Ok so you’re going to use Facebook ads, LinkedIn, or something to actually bring people into your book offer.
CRAIG: Yes that’s right. We actually did a study on our ideal demographic and we discovered that the age group responds three times better to printed mail than they do to Facebook or LinkedIn ads.
So I’m working with a mail-house that I’ve used for years to craft letters that we’re going to send in first-class urgent mail directly to their house so they can go online and get the book there too. There will also be a mail-in program.
ROB: Amazing, I’m so glad you shared that.
That’s pretty advanced, but obviously, you’re someone who’s done these things and I think that’s fantastic. It’s so important that someone studies where their ideal audience’s eyeballs are.
I 100% agree with you. I think direct mail, though initially a little more expensive, is a great idea. Yes, you have to spend more money upfront printing and shipping, but if that’s where your ideal demographic is, that’s what you need to do. Clearly, you know that.
Now let’s jump into the backend offer.
The biggest question you have to answer with both your live online training that you’re going to offer and your one on one consulting is how do you plan on getting them to buy?
Are you going to be getting on the phone with them? Is there a salesperson on your team who’s going to talk to them? Is there a video or a webinar? What are the steps you’re sending them through?
CRAIG: Right now all we have is the one page. Our assumption is that they’ve read the book and/or enough of the book to get them concerned about the taxes they’re going to owe to the point in which they’re ready to do something about it.
Right now all it is is a ConvertKit sequence that shows them the multitude of ways we can help them.
There are a series of emails delivered directly to each potential client that takes them to a sales page where we talk about a six-week live event. There’s a 20 minute summary of the whole thing that acts as a mini-seminar to expand upon the whole thing.
That’s for the $990 group training.
For the one on one consulting, I would have them book a meeting directly through a Calendly link that comes to me for a 15 or 20-minute telephone call so I can do a sort of pre-engagement interview where we can get to know each other.
On that call, I want to see if they really are a prime candidate and make sure they would be saving money doing this. I want to make sure they have the capacity to act and are really motivated enough to make this happen so I can confidently offer them the option of a refund.
ROB: I really like the six-week group coaching. I think that is valuable enough to be sold at $5,000. I really do.
The problem is if you’re going to sell something for more than $1,000 – $2,000, you have to do it via one on one interaction which is more often than not, a phone call.
It’s very rare for someone to go through an email or online presentation and buy something more than $1,000 – $2,000 without actually talking to somebody.
So you’ll be limited on the group coaching unless you restructure how you sell it.
I think it could easily be a $20,000 year-long tax and investing strategy mastermind.
The other challenge you have is, I don’t know if you can even sell it for $1,000 the way you’re selling it. The best marketers I know are doing online presentations. That can be totally automated. It doesn’t need to be an online presentation you’re doing live every single week, but you need a webinar or online presentation that sells this and your emails instead of driving people to your one page.
In my opinion, there’s not enough content to get someone to buy it for $1,000 unless they already know who you are and think the world of you.
You may get a few buyers that way, but you’ll get more cold traffic of people who have picked up your book, read some of it, and joined your email list and are now interested in the next step.
You can drive those people through an email autoresponder series into a video presentation which is basically your sales presentation. In that video, you’ll be teaching them and giving them great content, but you’re also making an offer at the end which could be your $1,000 offer.
I think the biggest question for you is going to be how to sell these things to your ideal client, which is always harder than you initially thought it would be.
Sending people to a page is not going to be enough to do it.
CRAIG: Right. So how long should the video presentation be to send them into the online training group?
ROB: 60 minutes is more than enough. Do you know much about Russell Brunson’s “Perfect Funnel” or “Perfect Webinar Sequence?”
CRAIG: Only by name.
ROB: Basically, you’re teaching great content and making it as valuable as possible, but you’re also taking people through a journey similar to the one you went through when you found your first clients who had tax issues that lead to those breakthrough strategies you discovered.
You want to take people through this journey so they can begin to trust you and put themselves into the shoes of your ideal client. Then you give them an amazing offer packed with bonuses with a time limit so they take action.
And they will do it. If it’s a killer presentation and the right people are watching you could be getting anywhere from 3% – 5% of viewers taking advantage of it.
That may sound like an incredibly low number, but if you’re selling something for $1,000 in an automated fashion, you’re going to make good money even just by driving traffic to it.
For a higher ticket offer, I would suggest sending every person who bought your $1,000 offer an offer for a one on one call with you at the end of the six weeks.
You can term it any way you want, but what you’re doing is taking someone who has invested a significant amount in you and talking to them directly so you can move them into a higher ticket offer.
So you’ll talk to them about how over the past six weeks you showed them what they need to do on their own and now on this consultative call, you’re asking if they’d like your help with it. Would they be interested in having you actually give them a map of all the strategies to make sure they get the results they want?
At that point, you’re going to have a high percentage of people who take you upon it. You could even offer to give them a credit of $1,000 toward the program because of their previous investment in the six-week program.
That’s just an example, but there are dozens of ways to sweeten the pot.
Craig, you’ve done a great job and you’re a very savvy business person. You understand the flow and what you’re taking them to.
I love that you can guarantee the savings and that you have totally reversed their risks.
I hope that anyone reading this is able to add this to their own business to create some type of high ticket offer that works for them.
CRAIG: Thanks so much, Rob. I really appreciate all of this.
What you’ve shared with me is so helpful.
I’m encouraged because you’re not saying to perfect the content or trash all of it because it’s not good enough. You’re telling me to put together a webinar that explains what we’re doing so I can take people on a journey and push them into that online training program.
I love your last idea. I was just thinking about doing another pitch at the end of the sixth session which would be a case study where I can help them see how to put it all together and then I can offer them a phone call at the end of the program.
ROB: I love that. That’s even more personable.
CRAIG: Whether they buy it or not, from a human standpoint, it allows me to help them address everything they’ve learned in the last six weeks, one of which is how to talk to their financial advisor. I want to help them communicate with their advisors because most don’t think about this kind of stuff.
ROB: I totally understand. I think you’ll be over-delivering because you’re going to help them on the call and then you can offer them something higher ticket.
I think eventually you might want to look into adding more salespeople because I think this really has the potential to blow up, but of course, you clearly don’t need to.
CRAIG: Thank you for saying that but I probably won’t do that because I don’t think I want to add any more work to what I’m already doing.
But seriously Rob, thank you so much. This has been so helpful.
I hope anyone reading this has found it helpful too.
ROB: Thank you for volunteering!
I look forward to hearing more about what you do. Thank you for trusting me and Best Seller Publishing. ‘
Keep me posted about your book.
