This may seem like a silly exercise, but it’s important that you do it anyway. Really spend some time thinking about who you want to work with. Write out their characteristics and then go find an actual picture to represent them. It’s amazing how your perspective changes when you have a physical picture of your ideal customer—instead of a hazy, half-formed image in your head.
Question #2: Where Can You Find Them? The next question in the Secret Formula is WHERE can you find this ideal man or woman? Where do they hang out online? Are they on Facebook or Instagram? What groups are they part of? What email newsletters do they subscribe to? What blogs do they read? Are they reading The New York Times or The Huffington Post? What other interests do they have? Do they like sports or the arts? How about fishing or race cars? If you don’t know the who, it will be hard to find out where your perfect client can be found. So make sure you know exactly who you’re trying to attract. Then just write down a few places you think the prospect might hang out online. Over the next few chapters, we’re going to take a deep dive into how and where to find your dream clients. I’ll show you exactly where to find the people you’re looking for.
Question #3: What Bait Will You Use to Attract Them? Once we know where the dream customers are, we have to create the right bait to attract them. Your bait could be a physical book, a CD, DVD, or an audio recording—anything that your dream customer would pay attention to and want. As my company moved away from selling to beginners and toward attracting dream clients, our first step was to create new bait that would attract “Mike” or “Julie.”
So we created a book called DotComSecrets Labs: 108 Proven Split Test Winners. This bait worked great for us, because most beginners don’t know what a split test is. But we KNEW that Julie and Mike (our DREAM customers) would know what these terms mean and they would be hungry to get their hands on the book. Within days of launching this new offer, we had thousands of dream clients lining up to work with us. When you find out what your dream clients want, it becomes very easy to attract them. Throughout this book, we’re going to talk more about creating the right bait. Right now, just realize the bait has to match what your dream customer wants.
Question #4: What Result Do You Want To Give Them? Once you’ve hooked your dream customers with the perfect bait, the last question is what RESULT do you want to give them? I’m not talking about what product or service you want to sell them. A business is NOT about products and services. A business is about what result you can get for your clients. Once you (and they) understand that concept, then price is no longer a barrier.
For me, I knew that the best way I can serve my dream client is to send my team to their office and help build out their sales funnels, hire and train their sales team, and set up systems to drive consistent leads into the company. That is how I can have the deepest impact and serve the client at the highest level. Ideally, it’s where I would like to take all of my customers. That type of service is not cheap, but the results I can deliver at that level are amazing. To put it in perspective, for that service, my company charges a retainer and a percentage of sales, which combined equal one million dollars.
I understand that many of my customers won’t be able to pay me for that level of service (which is why we develop other products and services), but understanding where you ultimately want to take the dream client is the key to this step.
Imagine that your clients could pay you anything to get a desired result. What, then, would you do to help guarantee their success? Where would you lead them? What does that place look like? Keep that place in your mind; it’s the pinnacle of success for your clients. It’s where you want to take them, and it’s the key to this last step.
That’s it. The four steps again are as follows:
1 Who are your dream clients?
2 Where can you find them??
3 What bait will you use to attract them?
4 What result do you want to give them?
I know that this exercise seems simple, but it is the key to everything else we will be discussing in this book. So take a few minutes now and really answer these four questions.
Up Next: In the next chapter, we are going to dig a little deeper and focus on the steps you need to follow to lead your dream customer from taking the “bait” to consuming your product offerings to arriving “where” you want to take them. If you structure this correctly, people will naturally ascend to where you want them to be. They will give you more money, and you’ll be able to serve them at a much higher level.
SECRET #2:
THE VALUE LADDER
Russell, are you a smoker?”
“What?” I responded. “No, I’ve never smoked in my life . . . why do you ask?”
“Well, I noticed that your teeth are turning a little yellow, and I wasn’t sure if you were a smoker . . . or maybe you drink coffee?”
“No, I don’t drink coffee either . . .,” I said. “My teeth look that yellow!?”
Those were the first words my new dentist said to me about 10 minutes into our first appointment.
When I started my new business a few years earlier, my wife and I had no insurance of any kind. I was just hustling to sell things online to try and put food on the table.
Then about four or five years into my business, I started hiring employees. What I didn’t realize when I first hired them was most “real” companies give their employees benefits. Because I had never had a real job before, I wasn’t really sure what benefits were (besides hanging out with me all day, which I assumed was the best benefit ever!). No, they wanted health insurance and dental insurance. So I decided to cave and get them all a “benefits” package. Within days of getting our new dental insurance, I got a postcard in the mail offering a free teeth cleaning.
“Sweet! We’ve got insurance. It’s a free cleaning. I’m in.”
And that’s where it all started . . .
Within minutes, the dentist commented on my “yellow” teeth.
“No, I don’t drink coffee or smoke. Are they really yellow?”
“Yeah, they are. But don’t worry. If you want, I can go out back and make some custom teeth-whitening trays for you. You’ll have to use them for a few weeks, but if you follow the system, your teeth will be white again.”
Well, I’m sure you know what my response was . . .
“Yes, please! I don’t want yellow teeth.”
The dentist kept working on my teeth, and a little while later, he said, “So, did you have braces when you were a kid?”
“Yeah, I did. How can you tell?”
“Well, your two bottom teeth are shifting again, and that usually happens to people who had braces.”
“My teeth are shifting? Seriously? What can you do about that?”
“Well, if you want, I can build a retainer for you, which will help keep your teeth in place.”
“Yes, please!”
When I walked into the dentist office that morning, I had come in for a free teeth cleaning. And in less than an hour, I walked out paying over two thousand dollars for my whitening kit and my new retainers. This dentist had strategically taken me through a powerful process that I call a Value Ladder.
First, he had created bait (free teeth cleaning) that would attract his dream client (me).
Second, he provided value to me by cleaning my teeth and noticing that my teeth had become yellow. Because I had received value, I naturally wanted to move forward and get additional value from him.
He then found another way that he could provide value to me—the retainers—and again, I naturally took him up on that offer as well.
Now, for many dentists, they make the most money and provide the most value for their patients by offering cosmetic surgery. Luckily, I didn’t need any cosmetic surgery on that visit, or I could have been out ten thousand dollars or more.
On my way out the door, the secretary scheduled me for another appointment six months later, adding me to their “continuity” program. Continuity is where y
ou continue paying on a weekly, monthly, or yearly basis until you decide to cancel. This dentist had a perfectly executed Value Ladder (fig. 2.2).
Fig. 2.2: This is a great example of a Value Ladder for a dentist.
One of the first things I explain to people when I start working with them is the concept of a Value Ladder, and it’s the first thing you have to build out before you can start working on any sales funnel. If you look at how we structure it, you’ll see that on the left hand axis we have value, and on the bottom axis we show the price (fig. 2.3).
Now, on the top right hand corner of this graph, you’ll see the big $ sign. This is where you want to take your client. This is where you can provide them the most value—and also charge them the most.
For dentists, this is usually cosmetic surgery. For my company, it’s going into your business to build out your sales funnels, set up your backend systems, and generate leads for you. We currently charge our clients one hundred thousand dollars plus 10% of their profits (up to one million) to provide this service for them. So the total cost to my clients is a million dollars for this service. But it’s the BEST thing I can provide them, and it gives me the ability to serve them at the highest level.
Fig. 2.3: You can use this same model to design your own Value Ladder for your business.
Now, ideally we would like to sell everyone our best thing, right? You want to serve your customers in the highest way possible. But the sad truth is that if I were to walk up to you on the street and say, “Give me a million dollars, and I’ll help you to grow your company,” you would either laugh in my face or run away, thinking I was insane.
Why is that?
It’s because we just met, and so far, I haven’t provided you any value.
But if you came to my website and saw that I was giving away a free book with 108 of my BEST split tests and all you had to do was cover the $9.95 shipping, do you think that you’d order it?
If you’re in my target audience you would—because the price is low, and you have a chance to receive some value in a non-threatening way, allowing you to see if you like the experience. Just like I did with the dentist.
Now, if you order that book from me and receive value from it, you will naturally want more. You’ll want to ascend my Value Ladder (fig. 2.3a) and see if there are other ways I can provide value for you.
Fig. 2.3a: My DotComSecrets’ Value Ladder includes products and services at all levels, including an ongoing continuity program.
You may buy one of my home study courses or attend one of my live events. If you receive value from that, then you may decide to sign up for my $10,000 Ignite program, or maybe my $25,000 Inner Circle program. And if I provide awesome value there, then you will naturally want to keep ascending . . . and THAT is how we sell our million-dollar packages. We provide insane amounts of value at each step of our Value Ladder, so our clients naturally want to ascend, get more value, and pay us more money.
Oh yeah, and just like the dentist, no Value Ladder is complete without a good continuity program. There are many ways to structure your continuity program. It could be organized around software, membership sites, or ongoing coaching, but it should be something you can bill for each month. That residual income will become the lifeblood of your business. For my DotComSecrets business, our main continuity program is our software ClickFunnels, which allows people to create sales funnels with the click of a mouse. Our clients pay us monthly to use this software to help run their businesses. It saves them a ton of time and money and provides us with residual income. Win-Win.
WHAT DOES YOUR VALUE LADDER LOOK LIKE?
Now I’m aware that everyone reading this has a different type of company. At this point, you’re probably trying to figure out how the Value Ladder applies to your business. I want to share with you a story that will show you how we were able to create a Value Ladder for a business that doesn’t seem to have any type of ascending products or services.
I have a chiropractor friend, Dr. Chad Woolner, whom I’ve known for a long time. In fact, it was his urging that got me to create this book. Like most chiropractors, he makes his living doing adjustments for about fifty dollars each. He runs ads, patients come in, get adjusted in about ten minutes, pay him fifty dollars, and leave. Sometimes, if the person has a more serious condition, Chad may put the client on a continuity plan and have them come in a few times a week over the next few months. But that’s about it.
One day my friend and I were talking. He wanted to know what I would do differently in his business if I were him. I thought it over for a few days, when a funny thing happened. At the time, I was working with a group of wrestlers who were training for the Olympics. Each week a chiropractor came in and adjusted all of the wrestlers. One week, the regular doc couldn’t make it in. So, instead of waiting for a week, one of the athletes jumped on YouTube, typed in “how to give a chiropractic adjustment,” and watched a few videos until he felt like an expert. Then he walked into the other room and quickly adjusted everyone on the team.
Now, before I move on, I feel like I should give a disclaimer or a warning or something. Don’t get me wrong. The point of this story is NOT to say you should go watch YouTube videos and then start practicing medicine! (And no emails telling me that’s illegal or crazy . . . okay?) The point is that in about thirty minutes, someone with no formal training at all learned to do what we were paying the chiropractor for. I started laughing, called my chiropractor friend immediately, and told him the story.
Naturally, he wasn’t as amused as I was. He launched into a long rant about why that was dangerous and why we shouldn’t have done it. Then I stopped him and said, “Look, I wasn’t just calling to be a jerk. I want to teach you something really powerful. You went to college for years to learn how to be a chiropractor—yet, within thirty minutes, one wrestler was able to learn EVERYTHING that you currently do in your clinic.”
Silence.
“I’m curious, while you were going to school, did you learn anything else besides adjustments?”
Defensively, he started to tell me about all sorts of other things he had learned and knew how to do.
“I spent years learning nutrition and natural healing. I can help stop fibromyalgia, carpal tunnel syndrome, and . . .”
And that’s where I stopped him . . .
“Have you ever provided ANY of these services to your clients? Or do you stop giving them value after the fifty dollar adjustments?”
Now I want to pause here, because most companies I work with, even if they think they have a Value Ladder, really only have part of one. Almost always, I spend my time working with them on adding products and services to the front of their Value Ladders, as well as the back.
After that discussion, I sat down with my friend and we mapped out his current Value Ladder. It looked kind of like this (fig. 2.4):
Fig. 2.4: At first, my friend only had one basic service. I helped him flesh out other offerings so he had a fully developed Value Ladder.
Then we looked at other ways he could provide more value to his clients. We figured out where he really wanted to take them. Ultimately, he created a new wellness program, for which he could charge five thousand dollars. The clients who participated would get ten times more value from each visit to his clinic. That was the backend—the highest point—of his ladder.
Then, after we built out my friend’s backend Value Ladder, we still had to find an attractive frontend offer to get people through the door. A chiropractic adjustment just isn’t that sexy. It’s not like a massage that people enjoy getting, and it’s not like going to a traditional medical doctor where you think you’re going to die and need some medicine fast. People usually wait until they’re in great pain before they’ll come in for an adjustment. Chiropractic adjustments just aren’t that exciting. If you have a blah frontend offer, your business will always struggle.
We sat down, thought through his business, and decided that a massage would be a good thing to offer as the fr
ontend of his Value Ladder. People love getting massages, and it’s bait he could use to get people into his clinic.
Now he has two full-time massage therapists who give free massages to get people in the door. And just like my dentist sells teeth whitening and retainers, these therapists are trained to feel when a person’s spine or ribs are out of place and might need an adjustment. Then they upgrade the client to the adjustments and then to the wellness programs (fig. 2.5).
Fig 2.5: Once my friend had a fully developed Value Ladder, his business completely turned around.
You might be selling a book right now on the frontend and have no idea how to build up a backend Value Ladder. Well, what other value can you provide to people? Can you be more hands-on with them? Can you offer more personal attention? Can you provide ancillary services or physical products that enhance your primary offer? My very first information product was a DVD on how to build a potato gun. (And that just goes to show you can sell anything online!) But I figured out how to build a Value Ladder by also selling “Do It Yourself” plans and physical potato guns to our customers.
The Value Ladder is the key to building your marketing funnels and mastering everything else I’m going to teach you in this book. This system does not work if all you have is one thing—like a book or an adjustment. You need to be able to build out a full Value Ladder. Most businesses I look at have one or two pieces of the ladder, but they rarely have all four. Once we add in the missing pieces, the business can start to expand dramatically. There’s no end to the level of backend services and experiences you can add. If you keep providing more and more value, people will spend more and more money to keep working with you.
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