The VSL

The VSL

A VSL or video sales letter is one of the most powerful lead generation tools we’ve found. There are many variations, but we’ve found success like this,

  1. Prospects are attracted to one of our landing pages inviting them to watch a free video that will give them valuable information that they can implement immediately in their business. We’re not worried about giving them our best information…we truly want to help them. They enter their email to gain access to the video.
  2. They watch our 10-minute to 45-minute video.
  3.  After the video, we invite them to a free 45-minute discovery call with us. On the call, we give them what we promised, but we also ask them questions to find out if they could benefit from our coaching program.

Our videos give them 3 to 5 super valuable tactics and strategies for growing their business. We use the landing page to sell them on why the video is so valuable.

The videos are concise but packed with real value.  It gives us a chance to help them while warming them up for a call with us or someone on our team.  We also build rapport with the video, because before the call they have a better idea of who we are. We speak directly to them as if on a one-on-one with them in a real strategy session.

We use Clickfunnels to quickly set up everything regarding the VSLs for new campaigns we’re going to run.

https://anchor.fm/will-zuberbuhler/episodes/The-VSL-e1f6lbq

Pricing

Pricing

Are you struggling to choose a price point for your solution? Keep your focus on the outcomes your solution achieves for your clients. 

People don’t buy what they need, they buy what they want.  If you’re an agency that is good at bringing more organic traffic to landing pages, then you’ll have a lot of customers who want this.  They really don’t want the posts you create for them or the interaction within the chat on those posts.  They want people coming to their landing page…the outcome.

Keep all conversations with your prospects focused on those outcomes and you’ll find that price is not as big an issue.  They won’t ask themselves if they can afford your solution, but rather can they afford not to have it.

Price high.  If you’re questioning the expense of your solution, then your prospects will too.  Fear and doubt are super easy to sense, so get rid of them. 

Price high and don’t budge.

We charge a $7K annual subscription for one of our solutions. It’s a school-based test-prep platform. We know what it’s capable of and so we don’t even flinch when making that offer over a sales call. Our knowledge of the outcomes we deliver gives us that confidence.

So, if you’re a business consulting firm like ours and you know without a doubt that you can bring someone to $10K per month consistently with your program, then why would you charge anything less than $5K…even $10K makes sense. They’ll make $120K over the next 12 months.  You’re selling them $120K for $5K. It’s absolutely a fair price. What do you think?

Validate?

We never validated anything.  When we first entered our market and launched our online solution. We never asked our market what they wanted or needed. Why? Because we had a good idea of what that was. More than five thousand clients later, we still don’t ask them what they want or need. 

We do get a lot of ideas from them, especially when we’re conducting workshops or webinars, but those are just ideas and we often say no to them unless we can clearly see that they’ll improve customer experience.

If you’re entering a market and you have no clue as to what the pain points are for your future customers, then you probably should look to other markets where you have a better understanding of who it is you’ll be serving. 

Common sense, conviction, and a solid understanding of who it is you’ll be serving are all you need. And conviction is important as it’s related to passion.  If you’re passionate about your market then you’ll have strong opinions of what is needed and how best to get rid of the existing pain points.

And the ultimate advantage is when you are your market.  Steve Jobs often said that at Apple they were building products they wanted to use themselves.  For decades Apple has told us what we want rather than asking us.  Their dreams,  passion, and conviction have bridged a gap we didn’t know we had.

How We Recruit & Build Teams

To start, we don’t hire people. We used to, but those days are long gone. Today we partner with people who we’ve worked with successfully. They know us and we know them. The partnerships are mutually beneficial. It used to be that companies always hired people as employees and gave them W-2s at the end of each year. Now the trend is to work with independent contractors, most of which have their own LLC. So, in reality, it’s a partnership between two business owners. I think this trend is going to continue to gain traction in the business world. It just makes sense with the new internet economy where more and more we’re working from home with people all around the world.

That said, we have two ways in which we get to know potential team members. One is building a relationship strictly online and one of them is working with them on a project in person. Yes, even with the events of the past year or so, we like meeting with people in person if at all feasible. Even if it’s in another country, we find it best to have face to face meetings in person at least initially and then once or twice a year after that. I know, some of you right now are questioning this or challenging it. It’s too expensive or logistically difficult, right? It’s not necessary. True, it’s expensive and can be logistically difficult. I agree with you.

But, I will add that when you do it, when you meet in person, you’ll find it adds a dynamic that cannot be replaced via the internet or cell phone. The people we work with as independent contractors have become our friends. We’ve had meals together and we share a history together that extends beyond simply communicating on the internet. This is important even though it’s hard to qualify.

What I mean is that the physical encounters we’ve had have helped our businesses because they’ve helped us communicate better and by virtue of this they’ve strengthened our relationship. Even if you only have a business meeting with someone over lunch once or twice a year, it still has a far greater impact on your relationship than a weekly Zoom meeting. And believe me the experience of visiting new places and learning about your new team member’s life in that place is very rewarding and can’t be substituted, especially if you’re having tacos with them in Mexico City or a cheesesteak in Philadelphia.

Also, we’ve found networking is much more fruitful in finding us new team members when we do some of the networking in person. It’s way way more productive than Facebook Groups and chat messaging. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had lunch with someone in another city or country and been introduced to someone who became a team member. It’s powerful even if only done in your city.

We also don’t allow ourselves to be in a hurry. We build teams very slowly and by initiating new projects with new people. But those people are usually introduced to us by someone who we already are working with. Rarely have we found success with recruiting on Indeed, Zip Recruiter, or LinkedIn. We’ve wasted a lot of time and money on those platforms. Again, those are purely internet experiences and though they work, we’ve not found that they work as well. And this is probably because we humans are physical in part and rely on that to build solid relationships.

We also have been very successful with finding good team members within our customer base. Sometimes customers can become the best salespeople of your solution and they come to have the deep knowledge of your company. They also bring a fresh energy and perspective to your company. This can make for a very good fit with your sales outreach or customer care. So, consider fostering relationships with your customers that open the door to that transition.

To sum it all up, I’m saying that you should at least be open to meeting with someone in person when recruiting or networking…at least at some point. You have to admit that you’ve desired to meet in person with the people you work with solely online. This is normal and so I would highly recommend inviting them to lunch.

3 Steps To Ending Distractions

Assuming that you currently have a proper mindset and that you’re determined to become a successful entrepreneur, then you’ll quickly find that enemy #1 to you getting the job done is distraction. A distraction is anything that successfully pulls you away from the tasks at hand. Becoming a successful entrepreneur is a matter of completing the right tasks in a timely fashion. Anything in the way of that is enemy #1; a distraction.

Step 1: Identify Them – Distractions come in two ways. They come from within and from your environment. Identifying them is the first step to getting rid of them.

Distractions coming from within are often the most challenging to deal with, but knowing what they are is huge to ending their power over you. Do some brainstorming and list on paper what are the things that pull you away from work that begin in your thoughts. An example might be that when you think of food you immediately decide that you need to eat something to give you more energy. If that’s the case then list it.

Make another list of things you can think of that happen and then often pull you away from work. One example might be when the phone rings. Do you always answer it? If so, then add this to the list. If you’re having trouble making this list then take a day and every time you find yourself taken off task add what took you off task to the list. Then move on to Step 2.

Step 2: Create a schedule – It’s crucial that you have a schedule if you truly want to remove distractions from your life. Distractions can be added to your schedule, but they need to have their place in your day and not take away time you’ve reserved for the required tasks of building your business. For example, you may wonder what’s going on with your favorite team. Fine, if you follow sports, you don’t need to rid it from your life, but schedule it and keep it constrained to that time period as a reward if you complete your schedule up until that point.

If you try to be productive and avoid distractions without a schedule you’re only setting yourself up to fail and fail quickly. So, create a good schedule today. Read our post on creating a schedule.

Step 3: Good Communication – You’ve identified your internal and external distractions and created a schedule, now it’s time to go up against your distractions head-on. In this step you’re going to do some pre-emptive work to mitigate the power these distractions have over you and your day.

Internal distractions are beaten back by your will and a little common sense ahead of time. For example, if you really are having trouble not answering the phone then you need to turn it off and place it in a room away from where you work. This will make it very hard for you to even consider jumping on your phone. Go to each item on your list and set up barriers like that between you and the things that pull you away from your work.

Often, the external distractions will be the people in your life who you love. You need to communicate to them what you are trying to do and why. They will understand and want to support you. If they don’t, then you need to get to the bottom of why not. It’s very important that everyone in your life and especially those who you live with are on the same page with you. If you’re having a hard time with these conversations then you may not even be on that page.

In conclusion, distractions don’t have power over you unless you let them or think you don’t have the ability to schedule your day. Everything is achievable if you have the will to do it.

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