Less than a week ago, I dreamed up a new paid offer – a group workshop to help people articulate their niche and outcome – with 10 spots available.
I’ve done these kinds of workshops before, but they were free, and in a slightly different format, and without the specific focus on niche and outcome (though that ended up being what most people asked about).
And I’ve helped 200+ high-ticket clients with my niche/outcome articulation process too – it just happened to be followed by working on other stuff in longer programs. I just had never isolated the process into a smaller paid offer like this.
So with a few tiny tweaks, I knew I’d have a great small paid offer.
I wrote one direct offer post for the workshop (and shared it on my FB profile, in my FB group, and with my email list), and also posted/emailed a few pieces of content about the niche and outcome topic that related to the kinds of questions I knew people would be asking on the workshop and wove in a pitch for the workshop.
I asked people to DM or email me if they were interested and to let me know how much experience they had as a coach (because I can’t pull niche/outcome wording out of people with no experience) and to also include the #1 question they’d have for the workshop, so I could make sure the topic and scope were appropriate for what we’d have time for, and for the process I was going to take people through.
The workshop cost $500 per person (though I have since upped the price a bit 😉 ), and there were 10 spots available, so selling it out meant total revenue of $5,000.
Here were the results:
I received 23 DMs or emails expressing interest.
All were a fit except 1 (meaning their level of expertise and the question they had were appropriate for the workshop – and that 1 exception was because they didn’t actually send their question, just said “I’m interested”).
10 enrolled (I sold out the workshop).
2 more wanted to enroll and were ready to pay, but all my spots were full so I had to tell them “no.”
9 wanted to enroll at a future time because the day I was offering it didn’t work for their schedules.
1 ended up saying “yes” for a more expensive program with me because that was a better fit for what they needed.
1 didn’t respond when I asked what their question was – so the conversation dropped.
So basically… all except one person were a “yes” either for this workshop or for a future one.
IS THIS COOL OR WHAT?!
I certainly think so. 🙂
But let’s back up for a second and talk about how I USED to try to sell offers like the one I just sold out with ease.
One time comes to mind when I actually spent an entire summer (more than three months, from early June to mid-September) working on all the details to “launch” and sell a similar low-ticket-ish offer that I hoped to get 10 people for (it was $1k for much more support than I give on these workshops – a 3 month program with modules, many group calls, the works).
And I didn’t sell a single one! 🙁
I created a lengthy sales page.
Lots of emails.
An opt-in freebie.
A three-part video series.
A website on which to host said three-part video series.
A long, beautiful sales page, with quotations, pictures, paragraphs in different fonts.
A checkout page that, once someone purchased, would automatically connect them to a membership site where all the elaborate content was housed (oh yeah, I spent forever on the program content, too).
And the tech, oh, the tech… it was mind-bending and heart-breaking to try to get all of that stuff set up and connected to each other (and I’m a fairly techy person, too, so I can only imagine how hard that all would be for someone less so than I am).
When I tried to sell that way, lots of people opened and clicked on the emails, watched the videos, and visited the sales page and shopping cart.
But, ultimately, no payment notifications came through to my email, and I never got to deliver that program to actual clients.
After all that work!
In later iterations of my business, I got a little less complicated with how I tried to sell, and I did get some people buying – but it was still more complicated than it needed to be.
During that phase of my business, I created webinars that led to a CTA to book a call with me, and lots of vague written content that led to the same.
And then the calls were really long, filled with conversation that wasn’t really about my actual program and whether it was a fit for the person. There was a tiny bit of that at the end, but the whole thing was more about trying to get them connected to their pain and feel the emotion of not being able to have their problem solved.
That model, too, was a lot of work – of hustling to get calls booked, and then spending a ton of time on the calls, and then having the majority of calls not convert.
So what’s different now?
Three main things.
1. I now have clarity about the results that I can help people to get, and how I help them to get those results.
Which means that instead of all the long videos and sales pages and vague content and long sales calls, I’m now able to write succinct posts that basically say “Hey. I have this conceptual process that I’ve developed. It gets these kinds of results. The program is set up in this way. It’s for this kind of person. It costs this much. Want it?”
In earlier iterations of my business, I didn’t have that clarity about what I was going to do with people or what result it would get, so I tried to make up for that lack of clarity with lots and lots of words about people’s pain points.
Of course, the vague posts/emails and long sales calls and even sales pages were mostly about pressing people’s pain points because that’s what the gurus taught me to do. The video series did have some real teaching, but it was also at a pretty high level, not too specific.
Think about all the vague content you’ve read, all the vague sales calls you’ve been on as a prospect, and all the launch sequences you’ve been pushed through.
Did you ever REALLY feel like you knew exactly what the person was going to do with you if you joined their program? And whether you/your situation was REALLY a fit for it or not? And what types of results could be expected?
I think that’s really rare.
Within all the flashy tactics, true clarity on those points is often difficult to find.
My newfound clarity led me to the next point…
2. I now have outstanding “preview” content that people can read/view to know exactly what process I use to help them and start to envision it working.
In the case of the niche/outcome workshop that I sold out, I have a great video that I created more than 2 years ago that details the exact thought process that I take people through to get clear on this stuff.
(It also has some live interaction with members of my free FB group where I applied the thought process to many different real-world examples.)
I also wrote a longer post a couple of weeks back that explains the thought process in a slightly different way.
That “preview” content has been freely available on my profile, in my FB group, and on my new website, so many of the people who DM’ed about the workshop had already viewed it a long time ago (and just in case they hadn’t, I included the links to the content in the sales post that I did for the workshop – and I said they’d be required pre-work for the workshop participants).
So these folks actually had a clue of how I would help them before they signed up. More than a clue, actually – they had a detailed roadmap.
When you do content creation the way I do, having people raise their hands with interest in working with you (and having close to 100% be a “yes”) just feels like a natural extension of the shifts and aha’s you’ve created for them with your free content.
3. I now invite people to an actual “qualification conversation” with me instead of sending them to a sales page.
I truly can’t believe what a huge difference this one makes.
It’s possible that when I was sending everybody to a sales page back in the day, that some people were “this close” to hitting the “buy” button but were a little bit unsure whether the offer was a fit for their situation.
But, because I didn’t offer a way to talk to me to confirm, I never got to know whether that was the case or not.
Just having a super-brief conversation to confirm that with people – and only then, if it’s a fit, sending them the payment link – makes all the difference.
And, actually, back in the day, I didn’t even really understand what people/situations were a fit for my offer and which ones weren’t – because I didn’t have much experience yet.
And even as I progressed and started to get clearer in my head about what people/situations were a fit, I still had trouble ARTICULATING what made someone a fit when I made offers.
So the fact that I was able to say, with this workshop, “tell me how much experience you have as a coach and send me your #1 question about your niche or outcome” and actually use those answers to meaningfully qualify people is huge progress.
It’s also huge progress that I’ve allowed myself to eliminate all other parts of the sales conversation – because, back in my days of doing sales calls, it was drilled into me that no one would ever buy unless I spent an hour getting them stirred up about their pain and the cost of not fixing their problem before we talked about what it’d be like to work together.
Obviously, 800k worth of high-ticket enrollments and now a sold-out workshop, all without any pain agitation, says otherwise. 🙂
.
Such enlightening lessons, huh?
They’re hard-won, but I’m so glad I pushed through the confusing and difficult ways of doing things to now have such clarity about what works instead.
In case you didn’t see exactly how I promoted the workshop, check out the sales post here.
And this later sales post is more in Strong Method™ style.
Of course, you’ll want to be careful not to plagiarize or use those posts as a template for your own offer or just change words here and there (it always gets back to me when people do that, plus the way I’ve laid out this workshop will likely not make sense when applied to your own offer and outcomes).
But it’s an interesting case study in what KINDS of things to include in an offer post/description (even if you don’t express them in the exact wording or order that I did), and how to think about selling an offer much more simply than you may have been taught to do.
If you’ve been following me for a while, you know that my main thing is helping people to sell higher-ticket ($5k-$100k+) offers weekly, via daily sharing of one of two kinds of posts (a direct offer and an educational/expertise-displaying post).
As part of that process, I also help people to understand and articulate what really makes someone a fit for their offer so they can include that in their offer posts AND properly qualify people who reach out to them.
But, what some may not know is that I also help with creating and pitching offers like the workshop I just sold – that include one topic or miniature outcome from your higher-ticket offer (or, alternatively, a summary of all topics from your higher-ticket offer) that give people another way to get started with you, and you another income stream and a different way to work with clients.
If you want help thinking through these kinds of things and writing your content and sales posts, my 30-day private intensive might be a great fit for you.
DM me on Facebook if you’re interested and (you know the drill 😉 ) I’ll go through my qualification process to make sure it’ll be of benefit to you.
And, if the niche/outcome workshop sounds interesting to you, click here to find out the next dates I’m doing it, and DM me on Facebook if you’re interested in one. (Also DM me if you want to be put on a waitlist for the next time I do one after the listed dates.)
And, if you’re a super-fan of my work who already knows all the details of it and wants to become certified and licensed to teach the methods to your own clients, DM me on Facebook about my Strong Method™ certification program! 🙂
Have you learned any lessons from trying different ways of selling programs? Have you found a way that works for you? I’d love to know in the comments here.