Overview:

The podcast discusses methods for marketing online programs during the COVID-19 pandemic. It describes how shifting programs online and lowering prices helped businesses succeed where others closed down. A case study is presented of helping an author create an online writing challenge to generate leads. Through personalized outreach and sales calls instead of pitches, she was able to sign up hundreds of applicants and make over $100,000 in sales. The podcast advocates interactive online events with breakout rooms to foster engagement, as well as bundled programs and higher prices once trust is established with customers.

Automatically-Generated Transcription:

So we're gonna move, we're gonna move onto, onto, onto John's presentation.

So I'm thinking as we go through the presentations, if you've got, if you've got questions even that you're thinking when we are five minutes through or whatever, drop them into the chat and, um, yeah.

And even as a pre, if you're presenting, you know, watch the questions come through and it allows us to sort of adjust and make it very, you know, very, you know, as relevant as as possible.

So, yeah, with that said, I will hand the reins over to John, John works with some, like, leading speakers who are out there, which he'll, he'll be, he'll be, yeah, he'll be telling you about and, uh, yeah, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll hand it over to John.

Yeah, thanks Scott.

Great to meet you all today and great conversation so far.

Fabulous presentation, Johan.

Thank you.

I've just, I took so many notes that I'm just adding to everything we're doing.

So today I wanted to talk to you about some of the things that we are doing and if you're a, if you're a speaker and, and some of the things that you've been having to shift.

And I, I had a co a few conversations already, like shifting from the live events to the online events.

If you've had to do that and you've, you've not kind of worked all that out, this presentation's gonna be kind of going through that and what we've done with ourselves and well as well with our speakers that we represent.

And as a framework around that, our agency essentially runs marketing and sales for speakers, brings in the sales team that allows them to enroll more people into their programs.

And in general, we sell ticket items from around about a thousand dollars to 20,000.

And we do that still successfully today in the middle of all of this.

So I'm also gonna put, see my screen and just go to that, that done this many times.

Does that come up on everyone's screen?

Yep.

Great.

Awesome.

So, so what's working?

What's not working?

So before I get to it, I'll just give you a quick framework of a, of our method, which I, I called Giving Model, which we developed about eight, nine years ago.

And we actually developed for the program that's in the top right corner view, which is called Green Super Camp.

And it came as a result of US marketing for about three months and then really struggling at the end to actually get some, you know, some response from databases and, and actually get final enrollment.

So we had a few more, few more, few more places that we needed to sell just to break even for this, this medical program.

I, I know that a few, a few people on here actually helped us promote in the past.

And essentially what, what we came up with was an idea to, well, rather than tying 50% off and the, you know, buy one get one free and all these different super early birds and all those type of standard strategies, which we had done for three months, let's try something that would just, you know, reach out to the market who might be staying on the fence or might, might still who see the value, but there's something stopping them from actually putting their hand up.

And so we, we decided to run a, a, a bit of a contest to give one of them away, which was basically, if this is a seven day program, bring your, your teenager and transform their life.

So we ran, we ran a, a contest, we gave the entire program where program away, it was 3000 US dollars for the program.

And as a second prize, we gave a 50% scholarship towards it.

I had, there was two weeks until the program, the program was in July in, in Bali and things like airline tickets and everything was about, was just starting to shift and almost doubling in price and almost on a daily basis, like the pricing was going up, all these things.

So I needed to do this really quick.

We needed five more sales.

I ran, I ran an email out overnight, inviting people in the next 24 hours to put an application in.

And in the application what we did was we said, tell us what effect this would have on, on your daughter or your son's life by them attending this, how would it change their life?

And the next morning I woke up to 12 applications.

We only sent it out to a database of 4 37 people or people who are still opening emails about this.

So we knew that they were still interested at some level.

We got those trial applications overnight.

And I opened up the first one and I was in freaking tears just reading what this woman had to say about her daughter who had really been bullied at school and how her entire life force was basically being, you know, drained out of her as a result of this experience.

And I'll go to the end of this now.

I went, I hope that's, that's the worst of them.

And then I rest the next 11.

And I, I was in tears all the way through.

I, I selected the one which I, I actually selected the first lady.

I, I, I was so overwhelmed by that.

I called her up and the tears came, continued in that conversation.

I got a, I've got my team member to jump on calls and actually then talk to the next 11 who all had extraordinary applications.

And after seven calls, we had five people registered in and we had the people that we wanted and we closed the contest.

And from there, the giving model has evolved to, you know, scholarship programs, grants, award, award programs.

And I've done that with many dozens of, of speakers and, and programs.

So that kind of gives you just like a, a idea of, of what that is.

I, I made the move about nine years ago to, to shift the way I was doing business.

And a big part of that was actually in, well, I had five different businesses at the time, which all collapsed in the G F C.

And part of, part of the, the evolution of that was for me to, to take four of them and, and let them go and just take the one that was most inspiring, which was actually the marketing business.

I was marketing guy named Hamilton at the time.

And other speakers like Don Toman and Martini and stuff like that and and stages with that.

And when I came over to Bali, I realized that I had to do things differently.

And it was great 'cause I, I was able to then shift and change the way that I, I I did business from when it was very much a in-person live on, live on stage and stuff like that to something that we could run as a marketing agency that was all done online.

And then, you know, this kind of also gives you a picture of some of the things that we've done as a result of it.

We actually also run festivals and with my partner Stella, who you, you'll see in here somewhere and you'll see the photo at the bottom.

That's us in Budapest.

There was about 200 people at that.

We, we ran another one in Spain in the Nees Mountain with 500 people in this remote to get taken over a remote village with a hundred speakers and all sorts of extraordinary activities of, so we, we, the, the lifestyle that I've, I've created was based on the kind of the business or the, the business based on the lifestyle that I wanted to create.

And a big part of what we, we love doing.

And, and you'll see the B one G one in the bottom.

There used to be business partner when we were marketing Roger Hamilton in Australia.

And, uh, you, I I, I got to see Ami and Paul come together and actually create that.

I was at the, at the event where she got the idea and was quite extraordinary to, to be as you know, a part of this for so many years.

And that's, it's a big part of our, the reason why we do what we do.

And I've already heard Johan speaking about this is, you know, why, why would you do all of this if you can't actually contribute in some way to, you know, the evolution of the, you know, our, our human experience.

So what am I talking about today is really this problem here.

We all, we all understand it.

We're going from these live events to this environment that we're in right now, which is this online kind of environment, which is different in so many ways, similarly in some ways as well.

And, and we get a sense of that today.

But the way that we actually do things inside of them is massively different to be able to get the, the result that we want to get.

And essentially, if you're in the events company, we spoke about backends earlier, one of the big things is selling your backend program.

You can invite people into, into, into a webinar or seminar or, you know, come into, into a live event and you can present to them and then you're gonna do a pitch or you're gonna do an invitation or you're gonna do something there that then gets them into a position of taking action to potentially buy your program.

And it, it shifts dramatically when you go online.

So in that conversation, what did, what did we do?

The other, here's some of the things that we did to kind of ride the Corona, the Corona wave.

We actually had a live festival planned in Bali with 500 odd people in literally the week, the week after they, they closed Bali and our event venue said, sorry, we can't run your event.

And we, we made in immediate dis decision to just shift that and do, do that online.

And we shifted that from 500 people to, uh, 1500 people registering for that event.

Instead, we still, we actually ran multiple zoom rooms where, 'cause we had multiple stages and stuff like that.

So we ran multiple zoom rooms and any one time there was 80, a hundred people on in any of these calls, it was extraordinary to, to witness what we could actually do with number one with Zoom, but the engagement as well.

And, and, and the feedback we got was just sensation we could actually reach so many more people.

We were able to bring other speakers as well who couldn't have actually made it to Bali at the time.

So it just gave us so much more opportunity.

And, and from that experience, we, we took that expense immediately to our clients and we're able to work with, um, you know, a number of different clients in, in this, in, in this way.

But I'm gonna give you one example of one of our clients who run a three-day live workshop that usually has about a hundred, 150 people in that workshop.

But they already had that already scheduled with multiple versions of that workshop rolling out people paid two and half thousand dollars Aussie to come to that program.

And within, within three weeks of that program having to run that, they made, we, we helped them make the decision to actually run that live event all online.

And we had 240 people show up.

And I'll tell you how that happened.

Um, we, we also, we also realized that we needed to shift our, our, our model to be able to attract people into that level one sale.

Um, and, and the level one sale for, for most of our clients is a $1,500 sale, a hundred, a thousand, $1,500.

And they usually do that in another type event.

So we, we, we had, we had to, we had to better do what, what we could do to shift that.

And we, we noticed some of the other big names like Anthony Robbins and stuff like that coming out and actually doing massive, massive discounts.

So we shifted that really quickly to an 80 to 90% discount on that ticket item to be able to set it through webinars to actually be able to then sell, you know, keep, uh, raising the numbers there.

And then what we did was we, we shifted the high ticket pitch into an application process during the event where we failed.

We actually weren't quick enough to move the, the, the pricing and we lost probably two weeks of sales in, in that, in that first part.

We were moving it as we were going through those two weeks and we're doing that with our sales team.

The another part where we fell, we actually left the sales team in those calls once that ticket item was coming really, really, you know, far down and we didn't need to.

And the third part was we, we just, we could have just been pitching, you know, now a program which was now at $495 rather than, you know, two, two and half thousand dollars.

So those are the things that we, we, we failed in doing fast enough.

And all of them, of course, we shifted as a result of realizing that within two weeks most of that stuff all moved where we succeeded was moving quickly onto, onto the online movement environment and just immediately, you know, taking all of the objections and all of the, the stuff that, that, that, that said, oh, we can't deliver this online and just go, well, we'll work it, we'll work it out.

You know, this is the entrepreneurial genius I feel is that, you know, we don't always know how to do it, but if we throw ourselves, you know, into it, then if we kind of work it out on, on, on, on the go.

So we did that and, and that paid off massively and made a much best, bigger impact as a result of that.

And we continued our client businesses, helped our client business continue where others have closed down or still are kind of working out what the hell to do.

We, we changed.

So, so for the, for the paid events that we already had, people already had paid for the events, we offered them a free petition participation in the online event, and then they still get the live event when, when borders open up and again, and that's in the future.

So we gave that online event for free away and that's extra value.

It's something that I think was just the most genius part of all of it as a gift.

We went to all past participants of that program and said, this is our gift to you as, as, as you know, part of what's going on in in the world today.

We'd love you to re participate in this program, get all of the things that you can get out so that you can actually shift yourself through this, this time and come out as, you know, even better as a result of that.

And that's how we went from, you know, 150 people paid to 240 people online on the, in the very first one.

And that continued, by the way, as we ran the next one as well, we shifted the sales, the sales to the, to the sales team.

So the sales team manage manages the in program sales.

So when we, in the, in the online environment, we move people rather than from a pitch, Hey, you know, we are in this program right now and if you want to take your your thing to the next level, you wanna actually now run join us and actually be part of our certification program or our advanced program.

Then, um, you know, there's, here's the sales page and it costs $4,000.

We, we realized, we knew that that was not gonna work even though one of our clients tried it during their program and, and was able to make five sales from, well this was actually that 10 client, they made five sales from those 240 people and a thousand dollars upsell.

And in doing that they, they kind of put that aside and said, okay, you guys keep doing what we did.

And we made over, well actually no foot 48 sales we made and close on $200,000 we've done for them by shifting that into a sales team managed application process.

And we gamified and we'd make a little bit of fun around it as well.

Um, the, definitely the low lowering of the online programs and of course packaging up of those online ones.

So we just, we just made the deal so ridiculously sweet that we could get the people on the front end because then we knew that we could actually make the sales within the, within the room once they were there.

So we, we, we did our best to obviously a number that, that, that still acknowledges the value of the program, but a number that is not high enough for people to kind of have to second guess or, or question they feel comfortable and that, that they, they can put their credit card down, down and actually make their payment and adding value.

Just something that we added added was we both bought the program ground that we were selling course, we're selling online programs, but then we gave them the optional upgrade to get the live version of it for free.

So we drop the, so, so here, here's an example.

We've got worth a $4,000 program that usually we'd sell for the live event.

We drop that down to just below the three.

And then in the conversation, our sales people then upgraded them back to 4,000 by giving them the live upgrade for, for the thousand dollars.

And we had a huge amount of people take that option up.

So essentially we didn't lose any money in that way.

In fact, we made more sales for the online one because of the price point.

And then we also made, you know, from a, from a, um, a financial perspective, an average sales value more on that.

And, and then the biggest part that we, that, that I think has, has been able to then sustain our clients is that we, we help them, you know, in some cases double the pricing of their coaching or certification programs and, and bundle more stuff into that, give more value and, and base and, and and base the, the decision to do that, that, you know, this is, there's there's so many people right now who absolutely would love to control and, you know, their, their, their business or, or their, their life 'cause they no longer have a job or what it might be.

So actually doubling or, or you know, up, you know, the highest point was actually a double of the pricing.

They added in two or three other coaches and programs into that which were worth like 10,000.

Um, we were able to double the pricing and therefore keep in fact probably increase the, the spend quite significantly with the people coming through the funnel.

So that, that's really been the, the, the primary stuff that we've done, which is so, so valuable.

I I, I'll I'll come back for some questions if you, if you want afterwards.

'cause I, I, that, that part is, has been working so well.

I thought I might give you just a, just as a bonus case kind of case study and just a story on how we do this to kind of get a sense of, of this, um, in, you know, for, for, for you guys, and this is a lady named Joan Fed, who's actually an author who's David would that would be be, well to actually think of stating this, but I'm sure you'll be watching this.

But this is a, a, a, um, a conversation around, you know, how does she shift from being an author into then, you know, running retreats or you know, you know, online training programs.

And, and she caught up with us and said, you know, I, I'm, I really want to launch myself online and actually run online programs and I wanna be able to market it and, and you know, do a hundred thousand dollars campaign.

So we came up with a strategy with her to, to run a seven day free writers challenge, which, which basically inside of those seven days, she would help people kind of get to that point where they really are clear about their story and what that powerful story is that's within them that is hugely valuable to, to share with the world.

She, she really, she wanted to actually turn this part into a business part.

You know, writing books and selling books is, is not a huge, a huge income as everybody knows here.

And if you start using it as a, a lead magnet instead, then you can create this business behind.

And essentially this is what her shift was actually creating a business behind the books.

And she's written, I think 12 books already.

Some, Hey Alice, once you've had bestsellers in, in, in different countries that she has earned from.

But she really wanted to create a business here and, and for her, she said, if we can hit a hundred thousand in sales for this campaign, then I have a business and I can duplicate what we just did.

So we said, that's great.

I sat with her and, and we kind of were going through different parts of it.

She was pretty adamant that she, she, she needed to follow the process that she had learned.

Um, and the process was, you know, run a something on the front end and then, you know, once you have, you know, those people in there and you create a great value for them, whatever, then run a sales pitch to them and, and then, you know, this is a, this is the process of, you know, doing that sales pitch.

And, and she had some gr you know, some, some great advice on, on how to structure that pitch.

And she had structured her entire, you know, thing that she was gonna say and she had this page that that, that she had set up and everything else and it looked amazing.

And she, she, she spoken out on, on a call with me and got about three calls of the way, way through and I could just, I could just see her really struggling through it at the end.

And I, I stopped her and I said, Joanne, it, it doesn't feel like that this is in integrity with you.

Maybe this is not the way to actually, you know, put your yourself out there.

What if instead of pitching the program at the end of the seven day for each challenge, what if you just gave your program away?

And she went, what?

And you just see this sort, this relief come through.

And she's like, wow, that would be amazing.

And then you kinda said her mind go, how are we gonna make money?

So I said, well no, don't give 'em all away.

Give at least one away and give it to the most inspiring person who puts an application in.

But acknowledging for doing the work and for being there and actually staying with it all the way through the writing terms and then submitting their, their final writing aid and and acknowledging that, you know, they have extraordinary stories to tell and you can, you really wanna help them to actually get those stories out.

So she did that and that shifted everything.

She was able to, to really stay in her power.

She didn't have, didn't feel like she was going from giving all this value to them trying to, you know, make a sale and, you know, take their money and stuff.

But you continued in the giving by saying, Hey, I'm, I'm gonna have an application process.

I'm gonna read everyone of your applications and I'm gonna give one of these programs away and for those who who don't get it for for free, I'm actually going to, uh, give you a 50% award or, or a gift voucher for you to then come through and actually do the program.

And, and basically that allowed us to, to then work out a matrix of how we were gonna get a hundred thousand dollars.

We realized that we needed 2000 people on the front end with that, about 300, 400 people.

We then show up on, on the, the challenge we were looking for a hundred percent of the application we had of the people who showed up in applications.

And then we knew, you know, from that, that number we, we, we knew that we'd get about 70 sales.

So those were the targets that we kind of worked through at the top.

The actual numbers were very, very close.

And then it was really great 'cause one of the actual places, my, my my business place called Elephant Journal, who was just a perfect partner, put a lot of those two, two and a half thousand people in there, 2000 people in there.

And then during the, during the seven days, we had an average of 380 people showing up on the challenge in, in the live calls.

And from there we had 380 people put applications in to win the program or certainly, you know, get themselves in for the winning of the second prize.

At the end of it, Joanne, she's from South Africa, she ended up choosing four extraordinary women from South Africa, well not only South Africa, actually all over Africa, who had ridiculously crazy amazing stories to share about living through the whole regime that's been going on there.

So she, she decided to give five away and she gave, you know, another one two way to, to, you know, one of the other stories that were just extraordinary.

So she ended up taking from one giveaway and giving five away.

And why, because she could, you know, she's running this thing online, so it's called AAA program, the Author Awakening Adventure.

And she said, why, why can't I just give more away?

Totally do that.

And then we, we, we, we shortlisted the best of those, those um, you know, 3 75 from there.

And, and we got into, into calls and into conversations with those and we had a a, we had a, an ability, which I suggested to her that let's have an ability to be able to, you know, give more for people who are in countries that number one is like we're selling a thing, something at about two and a half thousand dollars.

That was the price point that we're gonna be selling at.

But what if, what if people from South Africa or Indonesia or whatever else can't afford that can, can we actually stretch that?

And she goes absolutely.

Let's, let's, let's get, let's get people an opportunity to be able to access this program no matter where they are and what kind of financial background is with obviously some, you know, framework around that.

So we end up selling between $500 and $252,500.

The all the sales that we made, um, most of them at the top end of that.

So, you know, our average sales value was at $1,689, 74 sales 200.

Um, and if she had done that, I believe if she had done that from, from a pitch perspective, she would've got a fraction of that.

Um, and you know, there's just so much less you can do once you actually pitch somebody and send them off to somewhere and kind of hope that they're gonna make a purchase or whatever else.

But when you can get them into a conversation with somebody who's gonna really help them see the opportunity, see the best in them, help them really navigate, you know, where they are and where they want to get, and actually show them that this actually is the, the right place for them to be, then you have people you know from that place of trust and that, that place of value in that conversation actually making decisions that they may not have done for themselves.

You know, so, so one of the ladies has a transformational, you know, speaking like, we call it transformational sales, where we can get somebody into a position where they can make a transformational decision about their life that shifts their entire experience of life.

So that's what we did with Joanne and it's been quite phenomenal to see her then roll that out herself for the next few years.

That's pretty much the end of me.

I, I just wanted to say thank you again for allowing me to, to join you and, and Scott, thank you for allowing me to kind of put this forward and actually get this online.

We're out in Bali, so, you know, getting over to Aussie is, you know, certain that side of things right now is almost, it is impossible.

I do want to also just give you an opportunity to, if there's something in your organization you kind of think, wow, that would be amazing to have John and his sales team, you know, working with me, please, you know, jump onto inspire that agency and, and I'm happy to, to take you through a conversation that, that we can see the possibilities and see what, what we can do with you and see if that's a, a foot and we can add more sales to your organization.

That was, that was great.

We'll give 'em a round of applause, you know, so Danny, So, uh, yeah, so, so what I think, uh, you know, from here if anyone's got any questions, put 'em into the, into the chat.

So Yeah, so I'll, I'll put everyone into, bro, I've just got one question before we do that.

Hi John.

I have some products.

This is from Mark Anthony.

I, I have some products that I sell online through webinars and also tested many price points to sell at the end of the webinar rather than a strategy called leading to a high ticket sale.

My question is, how do you determine your price point For, for the, for for the low ticket items or for the high ticket items?

First, Mark, you Okay, if you can hear me normally with a high ticket items, I would go through to a strategy call, but since Covid we actually lowered the prices, tested a few points and come right down to like $497 for the wholesale, which seems to be working well.

I was just curious how you came to your price points, whether it be, 'cause from what I'm hearing, unless I'm wrong, the high ticket price points aren't really there anymore.

They seem to have dropped down quite considerably and I've seen it with a lot of people too that are selling online.

I was just curious how you guys get to your price points or are you still selling at a high ticket price?

I might have missed that.

Yeah, so, so essentially what we've done is just that first level sale.

We've that $1,500 point for that, we've shifted that to about 4, 9 5 for most of our clients.

One of our clients went down 2 95, we realized that was too cheap and came back up to 4 9 5.

So 4 95 is, is a number that we can still sell a three day program, which is now delivered live online.

It works well for most of our clients that, that are doing it at that price point.

And it's just interesting, it's just, you know, 2000, you know, before two, two and half dollars to 4, 9 5, you know, you can go and do the EW at 2, 9 5 right now.

So like lots of guys are dropping their pricing to that to get people through an initial, you know, major experience once they've had that major experience.

Our pricing almost is the same as we we were doing in rolling out Right, right.

Programs and, and and definitely at the third level stale, our price point is higher than we used to sell it at.

Okay.

So, so we, we basically averaging at, at the end of the day, we, we we're probably averaging a higher price point all the way through, but we at least getting the price point back to where they were when we were doing it all online.

Okay.

Alright.

So you bring them in at a low point and eventually upselling 'em later on once that trust is there.

Yeah, exactly.

And, and when they see value.

Yeah, got it.

Also packaging more into that so that the bigger ones are no-brainer and addressing the, the biggest challenges that they're having in this moment with the extra packaging.

Mm-hmm.

Okay.

Alright, awesome.

Thank you.

Appreciate it.

Yeah, no, that, that's, that's great.

Thanks John.

And it makes a lot of sense, you know, go low end when the trust is low and then, and then bump up from there when the, when the trust is higher, so, yep.

Yeah, go for it.

Al Can I ask John, can I ask, are you doing like with the online event, are you doing it webinar style or Zoom style like this?

Yeah, well my suggestion if, if the numbers are low enough, we, we are doing a Zoom style like this.

I know that Zoom has just done a huge amount of work for, for the Robins company to be able to run, you know, thousands of people.

'cause he had 22 and a half thousand people in in the last one so that he could actually do that.

So, uh, they've obviously upgraded some stuff there that we haven't seen that, but most of our clients are running hundreds of people in Zoom style open to, to also to have that, that connection far more using a lot of breakout rooms, bringing in their coaches, bringing in other people who can then help facilitate in these breakout rooms.

So they, they, they've really created a great environment that way.

Some of them are running webinar style stall, um, and because they feel that, they feel more comfortable in that, but you know, this is far more useful and connected than for sure.

Cool.

Alright, thank you John.