A serial entrepreneur, Dean Holland began buying and selling sweets to other kids in school, before trying, succeeding, and often failing to start numerous ventures in his teenage years. In 2004 Dean discovered Internet Marketing and quickly became fascinated by the industry, with an eye for opportunity he learned all he could and began to sell digital based products online.
By 2011, Dean had successfully sold over half a million dollars of digital products online and has since shared his unique marketing and sales concepts with thousands of entrepreneurs, in dozens of countries around the world.
Now a renowned Author, Public Speaker, Coach and Consultant, there’s nothing Dean loves more than helping others implement better systems and processes that generate more leads, customers, and high paying clients into a business.
Listen to this informative Publish. Promote. Profit. episode with Dean Holland about helping people grow profitable online businesses with a book funnel.
Here are some of the beneficial topics covered on this week’s show:
– Why having the same price for international and domestic shipping is smart.
– How offering an audio version of your book can be an added benefit to your customer.
– Why having a physical book is much better than only having a PDF of your ideas.
– How your next product should be congruent with your book and should answer new questions.
– Why it’s important for business owners to understand how affiliate marketing works.
Connect with Dean:
Links Mentioned:
deanholland.com
Guest Contact Info:
Facebook
facebook.com/groups/internetprofitshq
Rob Kosberg:
Hey, welcome, everybody. It’s Rob here with a special episode of the Publish. Promote. Profit podcast. I’m here with an old friend. We met each other in Russell Brunson’s Inner Circle quite a few years back and I have admired from afar what Dean Holland has done with his best-selling book, The Iceberg Effect. If you don’t know who Dean is, I mean, Dean spoke on stage at Funnel Hacking 2018 in front of a massive crowd. He’s a TEDx speaker, featured in Entrepreneur. His company, Internet Profits, has been around for… Gosh! More than 10 years now, Dean?
Dean Holland:
Correct. Yeah.
Rob Kosberg:
Helping new entrepreneurs to be successful in internet marketing. We’re going to do a deep dive into Dean’s book funnel and what that looks like with The Iceberg Effect. Before we even start, Dean, maybe give me a rundown and tell us, who are you primarily serving in your business? What does your business look like that The Iceberg Effect leads to?
Dean Holland:
I guess it would be fair to say that we work with people that are very much at the beginning stage of their journey. I would say these are people that are beginners, they’re not experts. They don’t come to us where they’ve got an area of expertise to teach. Because of that, we generally take people down a path of teaching them things like affiliate marketing whereby they don’t have to have the expertise yet to create their own products, courses, coachings, opportunities.
They’re essentially leveraging other businesses products or services and acting as an affiliate marketer being that they can learn to promote those products and they earn a commission on sales that they generate for other businesses. So, we very much focus on that early-stage entrepreneur, I guess.
Rob Kosberg:
So, you’re not only helping them to use affiliate marketing, but you’re also, I imagine, teaching them traffic strategies and sales strategies and all that stuff.
Dean Holland:
Exactly. Yeah. So everything from traffic generation to building and growing an audience and having an email list, email marketing, and follow-up and making offers and sales and all kinds of things along that spectrum.
Rob Kosberg:
Iceberg Effect has been out what? At least two years, maybe longer than that. Or what is the timeframe?
Dean Holland:
A little over two years. Yes. Yeah, just over.
Rob Kosberg:
I’ve been watching you spend money on paid advertising. You’re marketing it regularly on Facebook, on paid traffic channels. Do me a favor, map out what The Iceberg Effect from the actual book itself bumps one-time offers, one-time offer, one, two, et cetera, and what eventually it leads to. Let’s just dive into deep on some of the metrics of that stuff.
Dean Holland:
I have a few different things that we do with book funnels. The structure I’m about to give is generally the structure I will always deploy for a book funnel. This has been pretty consistent over every book project I’ve ever done. So we will have the book, and generally, my approach personally is I want to price that shipping and handling as low as I possibly can. So, we give the book for free. It’s a free plus shipping style offer. The reason I point that out is because, generally speaking, a lot of people, especially if they’re shipping internationally, they might have two different prices, domestic shipping, international.
Whilst I totally understand it, and people are generally being quite genuine in covering their costs when they do that, it’s my experience… Perhaps this is because I live in the UK and pretty much all my customers are international. I generally think that the shipping can get fairly expensive. The reality of shipping a book internationally across the world, it’s not as cheap as, I think, some people might imagine. So, I’ve generally tried to make the rest of my funnel work well enough that I can undercharge my shipping and handling because that way to me, I’m going to get more customers flowing through my business there. Like we’ll talk about shortly and you’ve already hinted at, because I’ve got a back end to my business, it doesn’t end with the book, that’s just the beginning, I’m at a point where I want as many customers flowing through that process as I can. So for me, my shipping and handling is just $7.96 right now.
Rob Kosberg:
And that’s international, that’s anywhere in the world?
Dean Holland:
That’s anywhere in the world.
Rob Kosberg:
Mine is 14.95 and I’ve never actually considered what it might look like reducing that price and simply going to new markets. So that is a great tip right out of the gate. Love it. Tell me, are you offering any bonuses right on the front end for that 7.96 just pay for shipping thing?
Dean Holland:
Yes, absolutely. I actually give the audio version of my book for free as a bonus, because one of the things that I think when you’re shipping a physical book, it does carry… Especially Amazon have stuck it to all of us normal businesses, haven’t they? Giving overnight, same-day shipping and things like this. We did notice people are thinking, “Oh gosh! Well, how long do I have to wait to receive the book?” And all this sort of stuff. So for us, rather than actually sell the audio book, we said, “Look, when you order the book, we’ll give you the audio version immediately so you can start now.”
That was a positive benefit. That increased our conversions by doing that. Then yes, we do have some other bonuses as well, such as for example, we’ve got a video masterclass version of the book, which you might think of that as a webinar, which I suppose it is in a way. It’s like we’re getting a perfect webinar into our actual program and into our book that way. So that’s another bonus that we have. I think there’s one other. Because there’s a seven-day or so period while they’re waiting to receive the book, I send them a daily surprise for the first seven days.
Which is just some additional training which is just indoctrinating our customers anyway into the lessons of the book. So they get the physical book, they get the audio version of the book as a bonus, they get the video masterclass of the book as a bonus, and then I send them a surprise every day for seven days as another bonus as well.
Rob Kosberg:
Now, have you considered, or have you tested a digital version of it on the front end instead of the free plus shipping? Wonder what that looks like or if you’ve tried that.
Dean Holland:
I haven’t tried that with this book purely on the basis that I think when you have a PDF, it’s very, very much easier to copy and people to just upload that online. So I wanted to avoid that little part. But the other side of things as well, just to preempt this, so I’ve been in business more than 10 years and I used to only have digital products. I never used to have anything physical, like a book or anything.
When we were driving traffic to purely digital offers, from cold traffic, our conversions might be anywhere from one to 3% in that range. The moment I started transitioning our front-end offers to a physical item like a book, our conversions went up to five to 10%. That in and of itself transformed the face of the business because we were spending the same money on traffic, sending the same amount of traffic, but getting three, five plus times the number of customers from that. And the only change was a physical item. So I think it was that tangible value that people could hold it and it feel… It’s a lot more real, isn’t it? When you hold a book in comparison to downloading a PDF. There’s a difference there. And that showed in our conversions.
Rob Kosberg:
Love that. It’s interesting, we were talking before and I told you I was just at Todd Brown’s mastermind, Top One, which I joined. I met two guys, independent of each other, and both of them told me… One lived in Portugal, one lived in Ohio. Both of them told me they had my physical book sitting on their bookshelf. So there’s something about having the book literally right there on their desk, their bookshelf. Do you have rough numbers on how many you’ve shipped over the last couple of years that you’ve done it?
Dean Holland:
Maybe in the region of about 15,000.
Rob Kosberg:
So, conversions went two times, three times, five times because you’re using the actual physical version of book. Love it. What comes after that? What’s the first bump, upsells, et cetera? Let’s talk through the numbers of that.
Dean Holland:
Sure. So the book, $7.96 shipping and handling. We then have an immediate order bump on the actual order form at the same time as they’re ordering the book. That’s a $17 offer. In my experience, I found that in the range of 10 to $30 roughly has been working best for us with order bumps. Just so happens to be the sweet spot with this one, is $17. And it actually converts at 42%.
Rob Kosberg:
Whoa! That is a great bump. So right out of the gate, you’re increasing your average order value by seven, eight bucks, just because you have a great bump right out of the gate. Okay. Tell me about your thinking in creating that bump. Obviously, you must think about what the needs of your customer are, what’s the next thing or the thing that are going to be most interested in? So talk to me about that thinking, why you chose that bump, et cetera.
Dean Holland:
For me, it’s a lot about the congruency and must be something that hasn’t already been answered in the initial purchase, but without taking away from that initial purchase as well. In my experience, I’ve seen a lot of people do things like order bumps and generally upsells wrong and it leaves a sour taste in the customer’s mouth because they were almost led to feel that they were getting all these answers, but then an upsell or an order bump, if you’re not careful, can take away from that.
And they think, “Hang on, I thought this was what I was already getting.” So for me, it’s got to be something congruent, but solves the next problem. So for me, I guess it would be fair to say my assessment would be the book is going to give them the clarity and the understanding on how affiliate marketing works. Well, now everything from that point onwards follows on in terms of areas of actually doing it. For example, with my order bump, it is a teaching and a training about how we generate across all my businesses hundreds of customers a day.
So, it’s like this natural flow. It’s like, “You’re about to learn how affiliate marketing works, well, this additional training is going to show you how we actually use this to get hundreds of customers a day.” So it’s very enticing. It sounds very appealing, doesn’t it?
Rob Kosberg:
Clearly.
Dean Holland:
And it’s something that we can explain in a very, very short period. I mean, it’s literally two sentences of text and we’re simply saying, “Hey, do you want to learn how we use this to get hundreds of customers a day?” It’s a training and it’s only $17, and as the conversion show, it seems to have really hit a sweet spot.
Rob Kosberg:
Yeah. Also, it has the feeling of you’re looking behind the curtain as well. Right?
Dean Holland:
Yes.
Rob Kosberg:
I get to see something that other people aren’t seeing and so there’s a curiosity factor and a mystery factor. Like you say that and I go, “Oh, I want that. I want to see.” I love it.
Dean Holland:
I think that’s the key with the order bump especially, is it must be something that someone can either say no quickly or yes quickly. And I think this is especially the case with a physical book. Somebody’s not going to typically come through this funnel ever again. Most general people aren’t going to say, “Oh, I ordered this book last week. Let me buy another copy.” Usually, it’s, “I’ve got that book.”
Rob Kosberg:
Yeah, one shot.
Dean Holland:
Yeah. So with this, it’s like they’ve got that one shot, and if they can see the appeal of that and it’s enticing, this is their one and only chance and they know it, so it can generally work really well if you hit those marks.
Rob Kosberg:
Are there one-time offers that you’re making, and could you go through what that looks like as well?
Dean Holland:
Yeah. Funny, very timely we are speaking to you. In the last few weeks, we’ve actually made some quite significant changes to our upsell flow. So they’ve ordered the book, they’ve chosen yes or no on that order bump now and it’s straight into our upsell flow. Now, for me, I don’t generally like to have more than two additional offers that come after the book, but I will also incorporate down sells with that.
So, if there’s two specific offers and down sells on each, then I suppose there are a maximum of four more steps that somebody might now see. One of the interesting changes that I think would be super valuable to share is that we made a change about maybe six weeks ago. The first change, I said, “You know what? We’re getting too complacent with our funnel. Let’s start to change things. Let’s try. Let’s just play around with it.”
Rob Kosberg:
Smart.
Dean Holland:
The first change that I made, I just reordered the upsells and it increased our average order value by 20%.
Rob Kosberg:
Crazy. That is crazy.
Dean Holland:
I didn’t change anything other than I switched that one that was second to being the first one. Interestingly, the major differences in those and what I attribute this change to is that the second upsell… I’d done like an ascension thing. The prices started low and went higher. So my second upsell was $197. The first upsell was 47. But what I discovered when I started to really dig into the numbers is there is an abandonment as people flow through. So not everybody’s going to even visit that second upsell. Some are going to leave.
So, what I discovered is, by having our highest value upsell first, we now saw that maximum number of people were seeing that upsell. Two things happened. Number one, it got more exposure to our most highest value upsell that contributed the most to the value, the average order value, but for some strange reason, and I can’t quantify why this is, it converted higher as well as the first upsell in comparison to the second.
Rob Kosberg:
So, you got 20% higher take rate at a $197 offer instead of a $47 offer right out of the gate?
Dean Holland:
Correct.
Rob Kosberg:
Wow! Boy, that must have radically changed your numbers and your metrics on what the value of the funnel is now.
Dean Holland:
Oh, huge. Well, these changes that I’m talking about, overall, they ended up doubling our average order value.
Rob Kosberg:
Incredible. It’s interesting, I just had a talk with a mutual friend of ours, Joel Erway. He was saying something very, very similar on his book funnel. Because I do the exact same thing and I’m reworking mine. Mine was 47 and then 297. He said, “You’re making a mistake for the exact same reasons.” He said, “You really need to put the higher value offer on the front end.” He did that. His, I think, average order value is in the 85 to $90 range, which is very significant in a book funnel. Wow! You’re the second person. I love to hear that. That is a great, great tip.
Dean Holland:
Yeah. No, no. Fantastic. So a couple of other tricks that we added in here. Because I don’t like to have an endless upsell-down sell process, I wanted to almost try and see if I could find a way to add more additional opportunities for somebody to say yes without it feeling like I was adding more upsells and down sells. A little trick that we just recently did that made a great difference is instead of when they say no sending them to a whole different almost down sell option and a whole different sales page, we started putting in these popups.
So, when people press no, I would make a simple yes or no offer as a popup. So, if they say no to the 197, instead of going to a whole new page, the first thing that happens is we say, “Hey, would it help if we broke that payment into two, half now, half in 30 days?” Usually, that would’ve been a common down sell that we would give. But because we now did it as a popup and it was such a seamless process that didn’t feel like we were making more offers to them, now if they say no on that popup, now we sent them to a true down sell option where they got less within the program for a cheaper amount.
So, we can make, if you think about it, $197 offer, a two-part payment on that offer, and then a $97 option for that program without it really feeling like we just made three offers. That’s important for me because I think the bigger picture here is not a book, it’s that the book is the beginning of the relationship. I think it’s very easy to cause damage to that relationship early on if you get too aggressive with your sales process. That was a little tip as well because now usually we wouldn’t have had that and now a percentage of people are saying yes on all those options now, you see.
Rob Kosberg:
So what percentage is the take rate on that one-time offer, number one, and the varieties of it? What percentage are you getting on that 197 or variety of offers?
Dean Holland:
We have approximately about a 9% uptake on the 197. On the two-part payment plan from that. It’s not that high on that one, although I think it’s about the same. So give or take it’s around 10% of people that have said no originally will now take the two-part payment plan. Then we get approximately about 6% of people will take the down sell on that.
Rob Kosberg:
That’s incredible. I mean, you add all of that up and you’re talking about almost 25% of the people are taking from a 97 to $197 upsell, which is increasing your order value 19, 20, maybe $25 depending on what the-
Dean Holland:
In that region, yeah.
Rob Kosberg:
That is fantastic. And that was just swapping it. Then I love the tip that you gave of just a simple popup. They click no, you make another offer. “Are you sure? Would this help?” Kind of thing, and it’s easy for them to just click out of it or to accept it.
Dean Holland:
Exactly.
Rob Kosberg:
You still have the OTO number two as well within the funnel?
Dean Holland:
Correct. Yep. We also have a $47 offer as our OTO two, which again, keeping in congruency with the process they’ve just gone through, for us, that is a traffic training course. That’s one of the things they’re going to have to learn to do as an affiliate marketer, is generate traffic, so we have a traffic training program that’s $47. And that actually converts at… That’s about 25% that one.
Rob Kosberg:
That’s a very, very high percentage for those of you that are listening. I mean, what a great funnel. What is your average order value in the entirety of the funnel? I know that it doesn’t end there. I want to talk about what the next steps are and where the customer journey is actually leading to. But what is the average order value of the entire funnel now? And maybe if you could share also what’s the cost of acquisition for a book buyer and that front end part of it.
Dean Holland:
Our average order value on that is about $54.
Rob Kosberg:
And that’s roughly double what it used to be before you made the changes?
Dean Holland:
Correct. Yeah. We were about $28 before.
Rob Kosberg:
Boy, you’ll be spending more money on traffic than I assume.
Dean Holland:
I think a lot of these changes were worked on because… You speak of cost of acquisition. Our cost of acquisition has been continually going up, and especially in recent months. This came out of a necessity, I suppose it would be fair to say, given that we probably could have done this 18 months ago. We got quite comfortable. It’s quite comforting to have a funnel like that that just works, but only because of these increases in acquisition. We were like, “Okay, we got to get back in the lab, roll up our sleeves here, and figure some stuff out.”
Rob Kosberg:
And roughly, cost of acquisition, what it’s been, what it’s averaged. I know you probably use different sources of media and it’s probably different on different media or maybe could you speak to that?
Dean Holland:
I would say I think we’re in a risky position in that we only have one main source of media right now. We have a paid source, which we use Facebook, and we also do have some affiliates driving traffic to us. So we got those as our two mainstreams. But in terms of paid acquisition, we’re currently exclusively using Facebook for that. We used to have a cost per acquisition of about $30, which is why we were quite comfortable at about $28. It was, “Okay, this is almost breakeven. Let’s just leave it. That’s fine.”
Rob Kosberg:
It’s like printing money.
Dean Holland:
Now, unfortunately, over the last six or so months, six to 12 months, our cost per acquisition is more than doubled on Facebook. So we went from $30 and it just gradually was going up. Then the iOS changes came in. That made quite a significant difference. We’ve been currently paying in the region of 60 to $80 per acquisition. But like I say, we recoup immediately. Immediately, we’re recouping about just under $55 of that. So we are actually in a position where we are going negative to acquire customers, but because of everything else that then follows, we are able to make that work.
Rob Kosberg:
Yes. And slightly negative, right?
Dean Holland:
Sure.
Rob Kosberg:
I mean, what people need to understand with any type of paid traffic or advertising, even if you’re offering a free giveaway, a simple opt-in, it still might cost 10 or 12 bucks to get that opt-in. If you’re driving people to a webinar or workshop or a challenge, there’s going to be a cost of acquisition that you’re never going to see return from until you sell your thing on the webinar or workshop or challenger or whatever. So you’re actually getting buyers and you’re barely in the red. It’s not very significant. I mean, look that’s the holy grail. Obviously, the holy grail is making money on the front end. But I mean, almost breakeven, especially for something that you’ve been running for two years consistently, amazing. Congratulations on that.
Dean Holland:
Thank you. Just to pick up on what you’ve just said, I think that’s a fantastic perspective, because I do think sometimes, and especially if you’ve not done it before, it can be quite unnerving to think, “Oh my gosh! I’m spending money and I’m going in the red.” But you just hit the nail perfectly. I think when somebody explains the process I’ve just explained, people see like, “Oh gosh! So you’re losing money to acquire customers.” But just like you’ve just said, who isn’t losing money upfront really?
If you are going to a webinar registration, a lot of people I know, they’re paying 10 to $20 for an opt-in for some of these email address. So you are losing 10 to $20 for that email under the hope, the expectation, that you will make that back through what you’re doing. Now, I’m getting qualified customers that are transacting with me with their credit card. And it’s a very, very different relationship, somebody handing an email to access a webinar, to somebody paying you to receive your book through the mail.
There is a whole different relationship there. There is so much more authority, trust, credibility that is going into that transaction that’s taking place. So whilst somebody else might get a hundred opt-ins for their webinar and they’ve spent one to $2,000 and they’re in the red, well, for that same one to $2,000 in the red, I’m getting dozens of customers that have transacted with me with their credit card.
Rob Kosberg:
When you pay, you pay attention.
Dean Holland:
I’ve tried a lot of things, believe me. This is not a problem, what we are explaining here. This is great.
Rob Kosberg:
I totally agree. We did some math on it some time ago. I don’t know what the math looks like today. I need to go back and look at it. But we discovered that a book buyer was 16 times more valuable than an email opt-in, because when you do a webinar, and we do webinars, you do webinars, when you do a webinar, you’re only going to get about 20 to 25% of the people to even show up for the webinar. Maybe another percentage watch the webinar.
So right out of the gate, 75% of the people aren’t even going to see your offer. They’re not even going to have a chance to give you money. Then of course, what percentage of the 25% actually do buy? So yeah, I mean, if you’re using paid advertising, you need to get comfortable with that idea. But an email opt-in is far less valuable than a book buyer, we have discovered, and obviously you’ve discovered as well. Let’s talk about the magic that makes it all work because you can’t make up on volume losing money on the front end, right?
Dean Holland:
Sure.
Rob Kosberg:
So, you’re doing something on the back end to make some cash. Talk to me about what your back end looks like and also the process of taking them from the book funnel to what the back end is, like an application process, et cetera.
Dean Holland:
We quickly, to be honest, move straight into our ongoing promotions now. I’ve played around with a lot of different approaches with this over the years because I think when I first had a book, I thought, “Well, we got to wait for them to get the book and then wait for them to read the book. Maybe that’s one to two weeks to get the book and maybe a week or two to read the book, so let’s not do too much here for the first few weeks of getting a customer.”
I started encountering these problems where I was thinking like, “Our response on the back end of my business just isn’t as high as I thought it would be.” So we went completely the other way. We started our backend promotions the same day they ordered the book, just in a bit of a lighter way. The moment we’ve got somebody order our book, we start sending daily emails. They begin receiving daily messages from us through into their email inbox. A lot of those are focused on consumption initially. We’ve got these bonuses.
We want them to consume our stuff because that’s what we found where the real magic happens. It’s not just that they ordered the book. Our best, ideal clients further into our sales process is somebody that’s read that book, they’ve consumed the book, they’ve listened to the audio book, they’ve watched the bonus accompanying tutorials. That person is so indoctrinated into our world now, so early on, we want to get that consumption up. But fairly quickly, we start moving them into an opportunity whereby we have say a sales page with a video sales letter on that is introducing them to how we can work together.
For us, we have a program that we have, a coaching program. We’ve got two options for that right now. We just changed some of our pricing. We have just under $3,000 package and we have a $5,000 package initially. It’s both the same program, the only difference in there is the period of time with our access to our coaching calls that we do. We adjust the pricing based on is it six months? Is it 12 months? So we’ve got those two options. Essentially, we are sending people now to a page that’s got a 27-minute video on it, some further details about that page.
The simplified explanation is they watch that, if they’re interested in the program, they click a button, they fill in an application form. We’ve created a system whereby now, based on certain answers to certain questions, they will get redirected as a result of that application to one of two places.
One of them is either, “We’ve pre-qualified you for a phone call, use the calendar below to choose the date and time for that,” or based on certain answers to certain questions, we say, “We don’t feel that the program looks like it’s the right time for you right now.” Usually, that’s based on affordability if I’m just completely transparent with you. It’s usually a financial obligation that they can’t meet. From there, we would redirect them to another one of our lower price, more affordable programs for their current situation.
So even our application now has been monetized and that’s been a positive difference because we used to find that about roughly half of all our applications were not qualified and we didn’t even want to have a call and we used to just throw them to one side, whereas now we’re starting to monetize those, which has been a positive difference as well. So quite simply, it goes from they’ve ordered the book, they’ve come through that process, they’re now receiving daily follow-up from us. We’ve got other things that we do.
We call them and say, “Thank you for ordering the book.” So we got these multiple touch points that we aim to do in multiple ways because not everyone reads email, not everyone answers the phone. We also have ads that we are retargeting our customers. So we’ve got an ad approach, we’ve got a phone approach, we’ve got an email approach. But all roads pointing to this one page where they can find out about working with us and they can go on to apply and actually have a call. Our sales are then done at that three and $5,000 level. That is done via a phone call.
Rob Kosberg:
I have so many questions. You gave a lot of gold. Thank you for your generosity in that. Talk to me about sending unqualified ones to the other offer. My assumption is this is an automated offer that you’re making, almost like, “Watch this video sales letter,” type of thing.
Dean Holland:
Correct.
Rob Kosberg:
Have you tracked what your actual monetary results are from that? More than likely, you were not going to sell these people into a 3,000 or a 5,000 program. So what has it meant to your business simply directing them into something else without ever having that phone call? Talk to me. And is it a video sales letter? Is it that simple?
Dean Holland:
Yes. Correct. It’s a simple process. So we’ve got a video sales letter for a program that is two or $300. It’s like a challenge type product. This program teaches them to do what’s in the book and gives them done-for-you resources and a member of my team runs a weekly live Q&A call. I think of it as a taster menu to actually working with us. They get to experience that. Because one of the things we’ve found, some people, they perhaps just don’t quite have the trust yet to tell you that they can afford to work with you.
So, they’re answering certain questions because they don’t want to say. And I understand that. So what we found is, how can we give people a taste of the experience of being a client without the expense on our part of them becoming a client? That’s what we’ve done now. If based on certain answers we are unable to have a call with them at that stage, there is a simple video they go to that simply says, if I paraphrase, it’s, “Thank you so much for expressing interest in working with us and becoming a mentorship client.
Unfortunately, based on certain answers you just responded to in our application process, I’ve been unable to pre-qualify you for a phone call today and that looks like it’s because you’re not currently in a position to afford the level of mentorship that we would’ve been able to provide.”
So, it’s like a little three-minute video that gives them personalized feedback to why this is, why are we rejecting them, because it’s a rejection. It’s not nice really. But it’s just us not wanting to waste their time or build their hopes up only to say, “You can’t afford it anyway.” So we have that personalized response.
Then what we say so that we are not now just cutting them off and leaving them feeling like, “Wow! I needed your help and you’ve just left the each here high and dry,” we say, “But look, because there’s many people in your situation that simply aren’t able to work with us, we’ve put together something special that we feel really caters towards you in your current situation. If that’s something that you’re willing and able to commit to, we feel that this is going to act as a perfect stepping stone to hopefully, if you do take action, you will one day be able to actually afford to work with us in our main program.
Unfortunately, I can’t do for you what I wanted to, but my goal is to get you in a situation where that no longer is your problem.” So we’ve created, if you imagine, three steps. One of them is the book, the other end of the scale is [inaudible 00:32:49] it, and now saying, “Well, there is nowhere else to go. It’s either one or the other.” We’ve now got this middle ground that we’re able to feed people into. And for those people that’s all they could afford, it’s great. It now helps them start getting results.
We’re finding some of these people could perhaps afford our mentorship, but they didn’t really want to indicate that. We’re finding now that we are beginning… Because this is fairly new addition to what we’re doing. But we are now finding that some of the people that indicated they couldn’t afford our mentorship and did go into that program, they’re circling back around. Now they’ve had a taste of, an experience of working with us, they see that, oh, we are real, we do know what we’re on about, we’re a good team of people. They’re now saying, “Oh, let me come back around.” So it’s created this cycle where they come back around to apply for the program within a couple of weeks, we’re seeing, of going into that one.
Rob Kosberg:
Love your funnel. I love the simplicity, but the parts of it, obviously very, very successful. Congratulations on that. If you’re willing, I would love to hear two more things. One is, approximately, how many applications, based on book sales, do you get? Do you know any percentages, like 10% of the people that buy a book end up applying and they’re qualified? If you wouldn’t mind and totally up to you, I’d love to know what has the funnel produced in real revenue for your company over the last two years? I know you do lots of other things, but just from the book funnel, what has that looked like, if you’re willing to share? Either way is fine.
Dean Holland:
And bear in mind, I suppose it would be fair to say, all the figures I’m giving today have been rounded up slightly. They’re going to be all down. They’re not exact because I’m not sitting in front of them. But in terms of number of customers that order a book that then go in to complete an application, it’s about 13%.
Rob Kosberg:
That’s what I found too. It’s 10 to 15% that do it, which seems high, but that is what it is across the board, which is fantastic. Love it. Great.
Dean Holland:
Then from there, like I say, give or take, about 60% it is of those people that apply are qualified and get onto the next stage, which is a phone call. When all said and done, as everything works out, it is in the region of about 3% of people that pay me $7 shipping for my book will pay me $5,000.
Rob Kosberg:
Wow! Beautiful. That’s excellent, excellent numbers. Good. Well, I can do the math on it or you can tell me approximately what the funnel’s been worth to you over the last couple of years.
Dean Holland:
Well, not as much as it should have, because as much as I’ve just given you those prices, our program used to be $2,000. It was only seven weeks ago we changed all our pricing. Again, we’re having to adapt to a lot of things because the landscape and the industry is changing a little bit.
Rob Kosberg:
Your take rate on it isn’t going to be reduced at all. It’s going to be the same or higher.
Dean Holland:
Well, ironically, we are finding that at $5,000, it’s selling better than at $2,000.
Rob Kosberg:
Isn’t that just crazy? How ridiculous?
Dean Holland:
And to be honest, we’d sat on that for a good while. It was quite a daunting prospect to think, “Wow! I’ve sold it at $2,000 for years. I’m comfortable with that. I’ve got a level of confidence in that.” But we just knew we have to make some changes here. So I was worried that it was going to go the opposite way. I thought, “Oh gosh! What if we do 2X times the price and what if it goes backwards now?” But it hasn’t. It’s seemingly going the other way. People are more interested. They’re putting more value on what we’re doing which has been great.
Rob Kosberg:
The importance of testing, right?
Dean Holland:
Exactly. Your other question was just in terms of what has this specific book funnel been worth to us? This is a multi-seven figure a year funnel.
Rob Kosberg:
Thanks for your generosity. Multi seven figures a year from a book, obviously great. People that you’re working with, tons of success with it. Anything I didn’t ask? Any other book funnel type thoughts? I try to be as thorough as possible, but if there’s anything else from an expert like you, I’d love to hear it.
Dean Holland:
I don’t think there’s anything specific in terms of just dissecting the funnel as such. I think we’ve gone through that well. But I mean, the one thing I would say, just as the general concept, is that there’s so many ways that I can’t even necessarily quite quantify that having a book and a book funnel has been so incredibly beneficial. I mean, for me, some of the biggest impacts really has been down to the trust and the credibility factor.
The way people come to us now when they come through this process, the conversations we have on those phone calls are vastly different. Like you’ve just said, somebody has got your book sat on their bedstand or something, next to their bed, or they’re going to sit in the gym or a spa and they’re reading your book, the difference that that physical, tangible book will make across the board of the business… Not just, oh, I said about conversions being higher on the front end having a physical thing. Yes, that’s great. We can quantify that.
But then the difference is people flow through, that you see the difference in the applications, you hear the difference on the phone calls, you see the difference in the uptake on your highest 5,000, $10,000 things. We’ve got other stuff, I didn’t get into that, but it doesn’t stop at 5,000. And I really, really think that having that physical thing that establishes, shares your methodology, your thing, whatever that is, and presents it with that credibility and trust and authority, the difference is felt for years to come from your customers.
They think of you differently. They react to you differently. They respect you and transact with you differently. I truly believe that the fact it’s a book has been the difference. I don’t say that empty. I’ve got digital courses. Instead of a book, I’ve got some content loaded onto flash drives, USB sticks. So I try all different things. I’ve got a cosmetics company with physical e-com products. And honestly, I can safely say that something magical happens when you have a book. It really does. So I suppose that would be perhaps just a perfect way to end this conversation, I guess.
Rob Kosberg:
I can’t think of a better way. Let’s give them some links. Where can they learn more about you, maybe get a copy of your book, learn more about what The Iceberg Effect is and affiliate marketing and that kind of thing?
Dean Holland:
Oh, thank you. That’s kind of you. I mean, I don’t generally promote things, but I mean, you can… Perhaps just go to my deanholland.com. I’ll start to try and keep a bit of updates on there on what we’re doing so people can always see my book on there. That’s just probably a bit of a hub to be able to go to different things that I do. So that’s probably a good thing. Thank you.
Rob Kosberg:
Love it. All right. Deanholland.com. Dean, dude, you are so generous. You shared some absolute gold. Thanks so much for being on the podcast and in my upcoming book, Book Funnel Secrets. Look forward to it, buddy.
Dean Holland:
Exciting times. Thank you.
