In this episode, we talk with Jan Roos, who owns a lead generation company for attorneys. In the episode we talk about the power of specialization and why focusing on narrowing down EXACTLY what you help clients/customers with is so powerful in business. Enjoy!

  Resources Mentioned

Adwords

Google Analytics

Google display network

Expertengines.co

Expertengines.co/Jeremy

Want To Work With Me?

Visit http://www.JeremyReeves.com or email me at [email protected]

Enjoy!

Transcript:

Jeremy Reeves: Hey everybody. Welcome back to the another episode of the sales funnel mastery podcast. This is your host, Jeremy Reeves and on the line today, I have Jan Roos I want to make sure I got that right.

So Jan Roos, basically, what he does, I think this is going to be a cool interview because he specializes essentially lead generation for small and medium law firms and -- now I know you know, anybody who is not you know, does not own a law firm, I do not want you to delete this because what I am going to do is -- he is going to kind of walk us through exactly how he gets guaranteed results for his clients and I am going to try to make it applicable to anybody listening to this whether you are a law firm or whether you own some kind of brick-and-mortar business or you are online.

We are going to try and kind of take his general principles of what he does and how he is able to get such good results for his clients and you know, kind of show you how to do the same thing.

So it is going to be cool interview.

So yeah, how are you buddy?

Jan Roos: Good Jeremy. How are you doing?

Jeremy Reeves: I am good. I am good. I am actually kind of excited because we -- I have been trying to -- it is now July 8 as of when we are recording this and I still have not been swimming the entire year which is awful.

We do not have a pool, the kind of where the yard is a little bit funky and so we cannot put a pool in, but my in laws, you know, my father and mother in law, they just put in a brand new in ground pool and it is like a (inaudible 1:34.5).

Jan Roos: So nice. I love those.

Jeremy Reeves: Yeah, I know. And we are teaching our kids to swim this year and so that is actually, once we get off the call I have been trying to cram an entire days worth of work into like 4 hours.

So I did not quite make that happen. I am actually going to get up tomorrow morning and finish it, but I am you know, we are doing that. We are getting pizza and you know, all that kind of stuff and their cousin, my boys are 3 and 4. Actually, the 4-year-old is going to be 5 in actually, a week today.

But their little cousin, he is also 3. He is coming in through the day, so it is going to be kind of a nice little family day. So I am so excited.

Jan Roos: That is awesome. I will try to speak it like an auctioneer pace so we can just get that (inaudible 2:19.0).

Jeremy Reeves: Buy yeah, anyway, so I kind of went on a little rampant. Tell everybody you know, about what you do and who you helped and that kind of thing and then we will get into the you know, kind of the meat and potatoes of exactly how you are getting people see good results.

Jan Roos: Alright, great. So yeah, (inaudible 2:35.2) the company that I run, Expert Engines is like you said, a lead generation service. We focus on law firms and really our claim to fame is being able to deliver results in 72 hours or less.

We basically focused on one very specific kind of funnel which I am sure going to go into later, but basically how we arrived there was kind of more of a process. Do you want me to go in the story now?

Jeremy Reeves: Yeah, go ahead.

Jan Roos: Alright, cool.

So yeah, I started out personally doing a little bit of agency work. Did a little bit of staff in house and then finally ended up winning a business plan competition and a grant to go with it which allowed me to start my first business Vitality Sciences and it was actually kind of a really, really scary situation because I had partner, he was on the supply side, it was health and nutritional supplements company, so I was basically you know, he brought all the product to the table, to the warehouse, and there was a 100% (inaudible 3:27.0) to move it out of there.

So you know, this encompass you know, the full spectrum sales marketing. I was doing cold calls, cold outreach, every single kind of inbound flavor that you could think off, content marketing, SEO, blah, blah, blah.

So I really sort of had to leverage some of the skills that I developed doing the staff at the agencies, the in house staff to really do it for myself.

So over time you know, as you kind of start of always in a position as an entrepreneur where you have more time than money and then once you finally ended up getting the money is when we were able to invest in the paid traffic and then you know, that was just like addicted to me because it is like, you could have the results immediately, it is like you know, you do not have to worry about your content or social medial ramping up. Just go the traffic store and you buy it and then if you can close the loop with you know, good conversion rate principles, copywriting stuff like that, then you know, you are putting in a dollar and you are taking out 2 or 3.

So after that, a transition out in that business and that is when I really started Expert Engines because it was kind of funny, the whole consulting thing sort of found me. I sort of had -- somebody approached me for some service contracts and the thing is I was used to being in an inventory business at that time.

So I was like, oh okay, well you know, I have this (inaudible 4:36.4) and it is like, I do not have to save this for the next slot of inventory you know, you can just you know, hire people with this, I can do anything with this.

So that was also super exciting. And then over time, yeah, we finally (inaudible 4:47.5) it was kind of more of a broader you know, doing the whole general thing that I was doing but then we kind of identified it was way easier. We were getting fantastic results of the paid traffic. That was kind of the strength of mine personally, but it also jelled really well with what the client’s like and it was -- and it pretty (inaudible 5:05.5) contrast us to most of the staff that a lot of agencies especially here in New York where I live, we are doing so.

That is kind of how we get started and then you know, you got a client, you got another client, and you start getting the results, portfolio and that takes us to where we are today.

Jeremy Reeves: Nice. That is awesome. And you know, and as I was kind of telling you before we started the call, the 2 kind of main things that I really want to pull out of your story and what you are doing is number 1 you know, I am going to have you walk us through exactly what you are doing for your clients so I can then make it applicable for anybody listening you know, kind of pull off the big insights from that and then the other part of it is I want to talk about the kind of the power of specializing you know, because you know, you chose the route of doing it for one -- you know, basically one main thing for 1 specific market and I want to kind of talk about that and why it is so important to you know, to do that versus just like, hey, you know, we are lead generation company for you know, businesses. You do it just for law firm. So I want to talk about that too.

But the first thing is let us kind of dig in to your -- let us dig in to your funnel and walk us through you know, exactly what you do for clients and even if you want to get in to how you exactly attract leads you know, into your business that might even help too, but then more importantly you know, what you are doing for your clients. I am assuming it is probably something either using Adwords or Facebook or something like that to get them you know, the leads, but you know, walk us through everything from you know, the ad like what the ad says and then landing page, what is the landing page say you know, basically essentially what is the funnel look like and what are some of the you know, kind of you know, secret ingredients I guess that you are using to get these lawyers such good results.

Jan Roos: Got you. So actually the funnel itself is you know, it is not easy, but it is simple.

So we are starting out you know, 80% of our traffic probably comes from Adwords and that is basically -- the reason that we do that is especially in the legal niche, you have people that -- you are already a known quantity, if some of these getting to the point where they are typing in bankruptcy lawyer in New York city, they have already made a decision to hire somebody.

So they are very late in the customer awareness you know as per (inaudible 7:26.4) Eugene Schwartz sort of thing.

So then basically we take into landing page you know, we do all our landing pages and unbounce for writing all of our copy in house. I actually still do a lot of the copy myself and we have just got a real knack at taking the benefits of an individual law practice you know, to a copywriter, it is pretty block and tackle stuff, but it is actually really surprising how few law firms are doing this correctly.

Jeremy Reeves: Oh yeah, it is not surprising to me.

Jan Roos: Oh yes, seriously. And then the whole process is kind of wrapped around you know, we have a lot of analytics in place.

Jan Roos: For the majority of businesses that we work with it is call based. So we have to have systems in place for tracking that and you know, it is a little bit complicated mambo jambo, but at the end of the day, you basically have the ability to track the conversion that pushes back towards Google Analytics through Google Adwords. So you really get the full picture of what to optimize for.

Again, this is the kind of stuff that is pretty much table stakes for your average you know, sophisticated internet marketer or a startup or something like that, but again, when we are dealing with local businesses like this, a lot of times they do not have it setup.

The thing that separates us -- so the thing is, I really do not like to call what we do Adwords because a lot of the people that do Adwords whether it is an agency or freelanced, they are optimizing around the wrong metrics.

So until you have this kind of full stack conversion picture, people will do ridiculous things like you know, you can just basically optimize stuff around click through rates which you know, is really good sometimes, but generally, there could be a correlation where the people are clicking more are turning into more clients, but a lot of the times it is not the case and if that is not the case then you know, you are basically buying a bunch clicks for people who are not buying.

To take that a step further, we kind of do a manual outreach with our clients because we know the different kinds of cases that are coming in, so you know, you could have a completely different kind of person that is typing for example, work injury lawyer versus somebody who is a construction accident lawyer. Even though they seemed very similar, a lot of the times it represents a completely different kind of person.

So in the end, basically this whole process you know, you have these different levers of the ads various copy, stuff in the landing pages, another thing we do kind of you know, it is sort of a little catch bucket if something does not get through is we do remarketing on Facebook and Google display network, but this you know, optimizing across the whole funnel instead of just optimizing for a landing page or optimizing for the ads is kind of how we end up driving this cost really down and make sure our clients are getting the right stuff to because at the end of the day -- I came from a small business world, I have a lot of you know, empathy for these clients, for the most part when we are talking about you know, small or medium law firm this ad budget is you know that is money that they could be putting their next vacation or their retirement account or you know kid’s college funds.

So we want to make sure that we are getting them you know, cash-back in their checking account as soon as possible.

Jeremy Reeves: Nice. Sounds good. One thing you hit on that I want to kind of dive into a little bit is you know, the awareness of the market and you are going after -- it is essentially looking at you know, a lot of people when they say cold and warm traffic and that kind of thing they are talking about you know, like a house list is warm and you know, doing things like Adwords and Facebook is “hold,” but there is kind of a second level to that that most people do not think about it and you hit on it before when you were saying, people are different stages of the buying cycle you know.

So the people that you are smartly going after are at the very end stage. They know, they are basically almost ready to buy you know what I mean.

They are kind of just making their choice as to who to go with rather than you know, they are not looking up why they should hire a lawyer or you know, things like that, it is like okay, I know I need one, now who do I go with and the sale is so much easier you know, going to people where they are like, alright, you know, I need a lawyer like now, you know.

A lawyer is one of those things it is kind of like a plumber you know, you do not really call a plumber and be like, oh, I am going to need you in a month you know, like when you are calling a plumber, it is like, look dude, I need you like in the next 3 seconds you know, because there is water shooting all over my bathroom you know, and that is you know, that is why they make so much.

You know, I think that is a big, I think that is a big kind of insight because a lot of people are trying to educate their audiences too much and you should have different funnels for that like, I do not know if you have separate funnels for that, but you know, there is kind of like if you think about it like a spider web or like a you know, like a jawbreaker something you know, the core of it is the people, they are the people that are just ready to buy. They just have to make the decision of who they are going to do business with and that is who you are going after.

That is like the easiest to get and then after you really nail that down, then you expand out to people who are you know, maybe they need you in the future or you have to educate them of why they need you and things like that.

But a lot of people start you know, you are starting in the core, the easiest you know, cherry pick if you will and kind of moving out, whereas a lot of people making mistake of, alright well let us just get everybody and we are just kind of educate them for months you know, on why they should you know, why they need us and such a (inaudible 5:49.0) you know.

What are your thoughts on? Is that something that you kind of just did or did you -- was that more of like a strategy like or you actually knew you were doing that.

Jan Roos: That was extremely deliberate. So to go a little bit back into the story about what I was doing before I started this company.

We ended up pursuing 2 completely different markets with 2 completely different products (inaudible 6:10.2) company I was running.

So one was targeted more towards survival backpacking and the other one was target towards cross-fit and triathlon.

So when we were taking different you know, throwing a bunch of spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks.

So they were completely different levels of awareness for the market.

So our survival product was completely new, which means that we, it was on us if we are ever going to sell this thing to educate people why this is something that is important, why it is something they should buy.

On the other hand, when we were talking about the fitness market you know, amino acid products which we sold were more or less unknown quantity, so that ended up being a completely different. So we could not really educate that much because you know, it was kind of like you know, one of those things okay, like we have these benefits, but is it really that different.

So that is a thing like we saw stuff you know, we had a way easier time securing PR, getting content out there, getting people to share stuff for the survival product, that was almost impossible for the fitness one just because there are so many ones like that, but you know, the fitness one worked well.

When we were able to capture people who were looking for a deal right then and there, but yeah. I mean basically, that was you know and I read the book, Breakthrough Advertising by Eugene Schwartz, a few years after that and it was like a complete revelation because I kind of then developing this theory about hey you know, like the whole education process is something that you have to match the product in the market, the customers that you are going after.

And then you know, he had this, Eugene Schwartz has this beautiful model for all that and it is just, it was really just one of those Aha moments where everything fit into place.

But yeah, the way that I kind of explained it to my clients is -- I used a football analogy. So the clients that worked best with Adwords in my opinion, like you know, you are basically at you know, 3rd and goal with you know, 5 yards to go.

But that is not every client you know, like sometimes in my business personally is something it has to start a lot farther out you know, I cannot just say you know, lead generation because first of all that means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. I cannot say Adwords. So a lot of the times it is actually something that starts a lot farther out.

And then basically you know, there are a lot of different -- so there are some types of lawyers that we do not work with, so if you take you know, personal injury lawyer, it is the ultimate I mean literal, bleeding or neck problem you know, you get hit by a car, you get whatever, slip and fall and then you need a lawyer like today because you are in the hospital.

You take something like a business lawyer, a lot of the times this is something that people are considering deliberately over a long period of time. For that kind of stuff, I would have more of an education so and for that I actually would not recommend Adwords you know.

The traffic is just too expensive to do anything that is not going to turn into a lead right then and there you know.

For that kind of stuff, I would say, Hey look, go to SEO route, you know, hit some content marketing you know, maybe actually do social media, it is worth building a brand out there so you can be (inaudible 9:10.4) and when it comes time for that person to actually make a decision, you have already been on their mind for a long time.

But again, it is like you know, it is so misguided like you see the classic attorney advertising, is the person injury guy buying you know the billboards and the radio jingle and stuff like literally you know, that is just all noise to people. No one cares about personal injury until they get injured.

So yeah, that is the thing. It is highly dependent on the kind of business that you are in. That is why we select this sort of businesses that work with it.

Jeremy Reeves: Yeah, yeah, I love that. You know, anybody listening, think about your audience, because every business you have you know, I mean it is a lot more clear cut like a personal injury you know, that is a lot more clear cut, but in most business you have both sides. You have people that are ready to buy it right now and then you also are going to have people that need to be educated first and they should have different funnels you know.

That is when you start getting into segmentation and things like that. You kind of have to -- and you can do this through surveys. You can do it through keywords or typing. You can do through a whole bunch of different means or even the you know, you can come out with like an opt in you know, whether it is a PDF or video whatever and depending on the topic of that opt in, you are going to attract different people.

So you know, one of them might be, I do not know, I am trying to come up with something off top of my head in like health, it is like you know, something very you know, lower level like you know, 7 Food You Should Never Eat or something like that, maybe that is like people that need to be educated you know, the earlier on in the funnel versus something like I do not know, a personal trainer or something and it is like you know, you can schedule consultation now.

Those people are kind of -- they have already been educated they know they need a personal trainer and they are kind of ready to go now and then you just have to show them why you are the best choice you know.

You do not have to tell them about why they need a personal trainer because they already know that. You are on to the next level where it is like, okay, now that you know that you need to lose weight. You know that you need a personal trainer, now you have to figure out you know, who, and I am that person you know. So your funnel is based around that versus you know, the first two things that I mentioned.

So that is a huge, huge insight and it is something that very few people really think about deeply, you know what I mean when they are planning these things out.

Jan Roos: Let me just point out one more thing too is that the other thing is that you know having a message mismatch is one of the worst things you can do for your marketing. I mean going back to the football analogy. Like if you got 1 yard to go you know, you can hit a full back dive and you are going to get that yard you know, that is all you are going to get.

If you do a full back dive off the punt return, you are just wasting a play you know.

So that is the thing too because it is like you know, what we do really well is -- am I the best copywriter in the world not by a damn site. Are we extremely good at differentiating other local competitors? Yeah. We are extremely good at that.

So that is the kind of where we find our sweet spot.

Jeremy Reeves: Yeah, nice, I love it. So you know, the funnels that you are building for people, what is that actually look like you know, so like when you are you know, like (inaudible 12:22.4) you just walk us through the funnel. Is there you know, are you getting them on a list or you kind of just calling them you know. What is it actually look like from, okay you know, we are in front of this person now and then getting them to actually sign up with the client.

Jan Roos: Got you. So basically when we are going for an ads, we have some stuff that -- like I said, you know, basic copywriting stuff that stands out in the market just because a lot of people are not sophisticated.

So you know, if we have somebody you know, let us say they have more experience, let us say they have -- I will give you an example.

Construction action lawyer, he holds the largest settlement in the history of Kings County, which is in Brooklyn. So you know, $23M settlements. You are an X million dollar case, right.

So that is the ad they click to the landing page and basically there are 2 ways that they can get in touch with the client which are both completely immediate.

So it is either a form with the explicit intent to get contacted by the attorney. So they will have name, email, you know, described how we can help you in your situation and there is also the number which is dynamically inserted to a number of different traffic numbers which allows us to track it back through the ad and the keyword that was type.

So basically, you know, that is the thing you know, we are hard core on the whole attention ratio thing. So you know, there is only 2 things you can do when you reach the page. It is either you know, fill out the form or call the number. That is basically the whole deal as far as that. We do not really do too much you know, lead nurturing. We do not have any sequences set up. The next thing is they are going to get a call from attorney.

Jeremy Reeves: Okay, got you, got you. And then they kind of take it over from there.

Jan Roos: Yeah.

Jeremy Reeves: Okay, nice. Okay, so let us kind of move on to you know essentially why you know, you specialize and kind of you know, the power of specializing in doing what you do because you know, as everybody can tell like there is really not that much going on with the actual funnel you know. It is a very, very, very simple funnel, but that is why it is so powerful I think, you know what I mean.

A lot of people when they think of funnels it is like, oh we need you know, 13 sequences this way. We have to segment them 4 different ways. We have to you know, do all this and this and this and this.

A lot of times not in every case, but a lot of times you have to bring it back to okay, what is like the essential stuff that we need you know what I mean. What can we really have to know that just absolutely nails it.

I just send out 2 proposals today. Actually, this morning before we got into call and both of them were very you know, they call and then they were like, oh I want you know, really complex like crazy funnel and I am like, look, you do not need that you know.

I would love for you to send me $20,000 now you know, but you do not need that yet. Let us first do kind of a phase 1 you know, for like half the price and let us nail that you know, nail the targeting, nail the message you know, the hook that we are getting the people and then once that happens, then we can branch out you know, then we can add in segmentation, then we can add in all this fancy and crazy stuff that will take it to the next level you know, but first, we have to get to A level first. We have to get actual sales first and then worry about the next level you know.

So with yours you know, you are really focusing on what audience and doing like one specific thing for that. So talk to us about you know why you chose to do that versus you know, versus something like you know, like why did you chose lawyers? Was it just you know, was it just like you know, pick of a hat you know, random thing or was it for very specific reason and the same thing goes for you know, why you chose to set up the funnel in such like kind of simplistic way you know, so talk to us a little about that.

Jan Roos: Got you, yes. I mean the thing is I wish I could say you know, I sat down 1 day and me and my whole plan is like, you know what, in 1 year I am going to have like a huge portfolio of lawyers is going to be great, but no in reality, it was kind of a situation where I knew that they were good from other you know, mentors of mine that said, hey look, lawyers are pretty good clients and the thing is that you know, from a fundamentals perspective, they are really good fit for Adwords because they have a very high cost per ticket which means they can justify a decent ad spent.

Most of the people are in that you know, last step ready to hire something so you can have the immediate results and I mean basically between those -- and it is something that is very tangible. It is something that translates well into keywords.

With those 3 things it is like a really, really great fit and yeah. Today, we probably have you know, a couple of legacy clients that are not lawyers and you know, every once in a while we will take something that is not a lawyer, but it has got to satisfy all those conditions.

And that is the thing like you know, one of the recent success stories that we had was a private investigator. So you think about it, so this guy is making a couple grand every single time he has one of these you know, somebody hires him for whatever 24 to 36 hours and you know when you want a private investigator it is something that you know, private investigator New Jersey is something that is very, very fungible and yeah, you know, he has got people that have a need and so there is somebody that is generally ready to hire.

So with all those things in place, that is kind of how I was able to settle on that, and then also so the thing about like the developing of the niche it is like I am trying to think -- Jeremy do you like, are you a mixed martial arts fan by any chance?

Jeremy Reeves: I have never done it, but I like it.

Jan Roos: Yeah, so we got UFC coming out tomorrow which is why it flash in my mind, so if you think about it, basically, you know, you have all these different things that you could possibly do in the world of market and we can compare to a fight right.

So you know, you could be doing striking, you could be grappling, you could be doing you know, wrestling, all these different things.

Generally, if you think about it like you know, most of the people that are -- if you take someone who is considered a good boxer in the UFC and you put them up against somebody who is a boxer in a boxing organization, you know, 10/10 times, the boxer is going to just absolutely crush them because that is all they do. Every single time, when somebody is you know, when the MMA fighter is training wrestling, the boxer is boxing. When the MMA fighter is training jiu-jitsu, the boxer is boxing.

So you kind of just have this lead that just ends up getting compounded over time and then you get deeper and deeper and the thing is that when, especially what comes with that is the case studies and all these different results that you are start getting. So you know, 100% of the time we are working on this specific kind of funnel.

So look, even if somebody could say that they are better today and they are full service agency you know, it would not be the case a year from now.

So it is a lead and it is getting bigger every single day and we are learning things within this specific style that no one else knows about. We are developing all kinds of different tricks and that is kind of how you know, that is the benefit of working really deeply without a niche.

Another thing that I think is really important is that when you have to define niche, you sort of occupy somebody’s -- like it is like a space that you occupy in someone’s mind.

So you know, this is -- we did a lot of networking to get the business off the ground here in New York city. The thing is you know, there is a million agencies, so if you know, I go out and I meet somebody in the party and they are so yeah like you know, we are digital marketing agency, we are full service, we do this, we do that blah, blah.

I am not really going to think of that person if I ran into somebody who says they have a marketing challenge you know, somebody says, oh yeah, like you know, I have, oh God, I really need some SEO.

So you know, I know people that focus exclusively on SEO and that person occupies a space in my mind, it is very easy to say, oh, boom, click you know, (inaudible 20:07.2) we got to get you in touch with, and similarly, you know, when people hear what we do as a company, they encounter lawyer who says, oh man, you know ,it’s tough you know, I am just getting my practice started. I just do not know how I am going this phone to ring, oh no kidding, I just spoke to a company that does exactly that.

So the niche thing also helps in that way and you know, this could be social media, this could be just general PR stuff, it is like when you occupy a niche, it is credibility too. It is a foot-in-the-door, because it is like you know, sometimes I have been talking to different people, legal organization and stuff. I have a (inaudible 20:40.7) your time getting into that kind of situation because you know, we have already stated that we are committed to helping lawyers out.

And then yeah, just a lot of other things to, I mean when you are dealing with the kind of client, it is like you start to be really empathetic to their problems because you understand like all the things that it means to be a small or medium law practice you know, they chase a different set of challenges and it is again, it is like the same thing, you would not quite be learning as fast if you were working on legal and e-commerce and -- so that is the sort of that stuff.

It is kind of funny too because the thing is that like you know, we have gone to the point of -- I have made some mishires of people that were extremely qualified in Google Adwords like you know, we made a hire last year that we had to cut after a month or two, but he basically was you know, a top 1% Adwords person, him and his wife got invited to the Google campus for like celebration-type thing and the guy honestly you know, he was not outperforming people that we trained ourselves in house from complete scratch. And we thought that was the right thing to do, but like I said, the specialization starts taking a life of its own.

Jeremy Reeves: Yeah, I love that you know. A lot of people they are like, oh -- let us just say the fitness industry, because that is you know, there are a lot of different ways that you can go with that. Essentially, what I am saying is that there are a lot of different levels that you can take this to.

So I am working with the guy now, Carl, and I know he listens, so hi Carl, I know he listened to podcast.

He is not only is in the fitness industry, not only does he help people lose weight like 85 billion other people do. His specialty is essentially reinvigorating your liver to help you lose weight because he found out and there is a lot of research that kind of backs all this up.

He discovered that your liver is kind of like the you know, the machine that like, if it is slow, everything else is slow, but like once you clean out your liver, you know, it is the one thing that kind of makes everything else move you know what I mean. It is that center cog.

So if you are you know, a lot of weight issues come back to a slow liver like a clogged liver you know, from all you know, (inaudible 23:02.6) you breath and drink every day.

So his specialty is not only in helping people lose weight, but doing it -- his mechanism for doing that is his specialty. So you know, using your liver to do that and of course he talks about other things you know, but that is like everything revolves around that core issue you know, and there is other people that do it.

I follow another health guy that his whole thing with losing weight and you know just being in shape is about not obsessing over it you know, and about kind of living in the moment and listening to your body you know, that is like his kind of specialty you know.

So there are a lot of different ways that you can specialize. Yours is a simple one, you know, you are specializing in certain industry, but if that industry is overcrowded like weight loss for example, you can then you know, not only are you specializing in a certain industry, but you are specializing in a certain mechanism in that industry to get that end result you know.

So I want everybody to think about that and think about what (inaudible 24:06.3) was just talking about the power of you know, having a specialty and then you know if you think that you know, kind of yours is good enough you know, see if you can take it another level deep you know, is there is something -- even if you specialize in certain industry or certain you know, result or way of doing it or whatever, look and see if there is a certain like mechanism for actually doing that which can help you specialize even further you know what I mean.

Even like Ryan Laveck with you know, doing sales funnels you know, his whole -- his mechanism for building sales funnel is a survey you know what I mean. So there are a lot of different ways of looking that you know.

So with that said you know, I think we cover a lot. I even kind of get refreshed on a couple things that I have forgotten about over the years you know, so it was super helpful I think everybody is going to get a ton out of this interview.

So before we head off you know, tell everybody -- well first of all, is there anything that I did not ask that you know you would get off the call and say, shit, you know, I wish Jeremy asked me that because it can help everybody you know, is there any kind of one big key insight that everybody should take away?

Jan Roos: Okay, I got something that was kind of coming up really. So you know, another thing is that you know, when we were talking about simple funnels and this is kind of like saying with your proposal. One of the things that is really important especially for the people out there that are doing marketing and consulting of any type really is that sometimes a client will want something extremely complex, but it is your job as the consultant, to have the discipline to say, look you know, we have something that is more simple that can sometimes be more effective than something complex and the thing is that it is very tough to make that decision for yourself especially when you are starting out.

So you can actually be doing a lot of benefits to a client by doing that. So I think we are definitely in line on that, but that is the thing. It is not always -- it is not always the most fancy stuff that works.

Jeremy Reeves: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I just had a -- I had another client and I do that all the time. I have so many people who are like, oh my God, you actually just told me to give you less money you know, but it is refreshing you know, for clients you know.

I actually just -- I just did a podcast, I forgot if it is live or not, in fact, I think it is actually going live today as we recording this, but you know, I was talking about how -- I actually had a client that they were on (inaudible 26:33.3) for $2000 a month and just the way that things changed it was not in their best interest to keep paying that you know, actually kind of you know, reanalyzing our working range you know, and I am the one that brought it up. It was not them that brought it up. It was me that brought it up and you know, it just comes back to you know, putting your clients first you know what I mean.

It seems it hard to do, I mean it really is like when you are saying, when somebody is paying you money and you are like, look pay me less you know like, it is not an easy thing to do you know what I mean, but you have to, you know what I mean. You have to be able to do that if you are going to be in this long term you know what I mean, because that is what create like you know even the you know, I have several clients that I have done that for and we got the result and they were like, oh my God, this is the best thing ever. I am telling everybody I know about you because you know, I never would ever expected for somebody to actually you know, tell me to pay them less money you know and not only that you do that, but now we are actually getting you know really good results from and we spent half of what we thought we are going to you know what I mean and it is just you know, it is just better you know, plus you just (inaudible 27:44.6) it is so much better for your peace of mind as well you know and I am huge on that you know, do not build a business just for money like do it you know for your own happiness as well you know what I mean.

Yes, I think that is you know, I think that is a big point and that does not mean that you know, you drop all of your fees, no not at all.

When it makes sense you take them to the highest you know, the highest package or whatever that you have, but whatever makes sense is what you have to give them whether that is $5,000 package or $50,000 package you know.

For one example like if someone came to me and they were you know, a $10M company, I am not going to say, oh, you know, we are just going to start super small for you know, like a couple of grand or whatever, unless they were like, hey, let us do like a test or whatever, then that is fine and I do that all the time you know, that is kind of normal, but you know, if they were like, look, you know we have this funnel and we want to take it to the next level and blah, blah you know, we want to add segmentation, we have to redo the sales letter all that kind of thing then they are in their best interest would be doing that you know.

It would not be doing small little thing you know what I mean. So it really just comes down to looking at your clients or your customers if you do not have clients even if you are selling a product.

Looking at your business in a way that is you know, taking their interest first you know, your mind every decision you make should always be wrapped around to your you know, what is best for your customer or your client because yeah, you are going to lose money in the short term, that is a given, but you make it off in a long term, you know what I mean. Not only in terms of monetary, but also you know, like I said, like just in your own peace of mind you know. So yeah, I love that, I fully agree on that.

Yes, so before we kick it off here, tell everybody you know, where they can find out about you and you know how they can get in touch.

Jan Roos: Okay, got you. So our website is over at Expertengines.co it is very legal focused, do you imagine from the (inaudible 29:47.2) conversation, but yeah, if anyone ever wants to take a look and see whether Adwords, lead gen and the style that we do is something that is a good fit honestly probably not even for hiring us just for your own knowledge, we are going to set up a little worksheet over at Expertengines.co/jeremy, so you can just send your email and we will send you the PDF for that.

Jeremy Reeves: Sounds good. Yeah, because I mean honestly, it is not you know, all traffic sources are not right for the you know, for everybody.

I just talked to somebody yesterday, who you know, they have an awesome product and all that and -- but Adwords just would not be their right fit for them. I think one of my kids is coming in the room now let us see.

Jan Roos: I actually forgot a key part of my story. One of the reasons that I was so focused on Adwords is that we actually got completely (inaudible 30:42.8) by an Adwords consultant who did not have the integrity to say that the kind of product we were selling was not a good fit for Adwords, so that was yeah, man, I should said that way early, anyway.

Jeremy Reeves: No, I mean it is super important you know. Yes everybody go to Expertengines.co or if you want to get the little worksheet that he put together Expertengines.co/jeremy and before we hop off here, I am going to have Logan.

Logan is sitting on my lap, he is my 3-year-old. So Logan, can you say Hi. Say hi to everybody. Go ahead. No okay, alright, never mind. I thought we are going to have a little special guest here, but apparently not.

Jan Roos: Well, thanks for everything Jeremy. It is awesome and I hope you guys can get some good (inaudible 31:32.2) today.

Jeremy Reeves: Yeah right, I do not know, I probably get sunburned because I have not been out in the sun all summer. At least my chest and stomach and back you know, I have been wearing shorts (inaudible 31:43.0) something like that, but yeah, anyway, everybody go to Expertengines.co or Expertengines.co/jeremy to get the worksheet and see if Adwords is right for you and yeah, I hope you have a good day and thanks again for coming on, it was awesome.

Jan Roos: My pleasure Jeremy. Thanks again.

Jeremy Reeves: Alright, I will talk to you soon.

In this episode I walk you through the 5 stages of market sophistication. This is a copywriting principle and persuasion technique that VERY few people know about, and even fewer talk about. However it's one of the most important factors in the failure or success of a campaign, and a must-know for every marketer on Earth!

Resources Mentioned

http://www.jeremyreeves.com/

Want To Work With Me?

Visit http://www.JeremyReeves.com or email me at [email protected]

Enjoy!

Transcript:

Hey what is going everybody, Jeremy Reeves here with another episode of the sales funnel mastery podcast.

Today, we are going to talk about something that very few people talk about and fewer people, actually no, I said that wrong, that very few people know about and even fewer people talk about right, and that is the 5 Stages Of Market Sophistication Market Awareness right.

So this is -- this is actually from a book called breakthrough advertising by Eugene Schwartz right. It is kind of a classic copywriting book and it is something that -- is kind of the you know the backbone of everything that really works you know.

When things work it is because you correctly identified where your market was at in their level of sophistication for whatever it is that you are selling and when things flopped it is because you did not quite hit the mark right.

I will kind of you know, walk you through everything and you can think about where your market is, okay.

So you know, back when Eugene Schwartz was you know, was alive and you know basically one of the best copywriters that ever lived.

Essentially, you know, he introduced this concept known as market sophistication and it is essentially, it explains why certain types of approaches work for different products in different markets, right.

As you know, different things are going to work for different products in different markets you know. I have written copy for oh my God, countless numbers of people and it is funny because will approach things differently even though it is going to a similar audience or a similar product, right.

So I am in the middle of writing a promotion right now for Agora, right, which is the biggest -- I am pretty sure it is the biggest. I think they are around $300M, the biggest alternative health newsletter in the world right now right.

So this is you know, basically, it is one of those companies that if you are copywriting you kind of get the chance to work (inaudible 2:34.0) you are like considered like the you know elite of elite you know kind of thing.

So it is kind of cool you know going through the process of that and you know, it is funny because the process that we are (inaudible 2:47.0) and the hook -- we just finalized the hook actually this morning which is totally, totally bad ass. I am really excited right about it.

It is funny because the whole process and the way that we are approaching this is actually different than I have done in a lot of other alternative health markets you know and even though, it is a very, very, very similar audience right and that is because of the levels of market sophistication, where they are advertising that kind of thing. They kind of (inaudible 3:16.1) marketing too and just what they found that works the best for them you know.

There is a lot of different factors that come into play, so you cannot just -- that is why you know, templates are awesome you know. I have copy templates, they are one of my best selling products, but what I always tell people is you cannot just take the template and just reuse it exactly as it is. I mean you have to -- it is good for starting point like if you are not a good copywriter, if you do not know how to write copy or whatever. They are very, very, very, very good starting point, but you know, once you get pass the starting point you kind of have to take them and customize them you know to your audience you know. It is because of this right.

So let me get into all these and so there are 5 levels of this. The first one is essentially you know, the interaction, right.

So in this stage, the product or service, I am just going to say product for all these, but it could be service too.

In this stage, the product is brand new. So think of the Ipod when it was first launched, right. It was totally in a class of its own, nothing else is like it on the market right.

So in this stage you do not need to write a 20-page sales letter about every little tiny details that is going into the product.

Your story here, the approach you are taking is the story right, about the innovation, not the details. You are convincing people that this is the newest and greatest thing because of how new and you know “cool” it is, right.

So let me give you an example.

When Steve Jobs came out with the Ipod, right, the headline that was used to sell the Ipod, it was not anything you know, insane. It was not I think grand or spectacular or anything like that. It simply said something along the lines of puts 1000 songs in your pocket, right. That is it. Puts 1000 songs in your pocket. That is very, very, very simple, but you know, no lengthy discussion was needed. The product was really innovative, it was the first of its kind and most people never would have thought it was even possible and it completely, as you know, it completely revolutionized the entire way that we listen to music, right.

So that is all that was needed. What a lot of people do not understand about copy ready is that you have to write only what is needed and nothing else right. That is why people are always like, oh, you know -- I have actually had a lot of people come to me and they are like, hey, you know, I need long firm sales letter, I am like, hey, no you do not you know, because we can write this in a way that it does not take that long to make it you know, it is so new that the concept is so clear and so focused and there is not a lot of competition. All you have to do is just tell people it is there right, and make it a new thing. Put a story around it and sell it right.

So that is level 1, the introduction. That is if you are basically coming out with something that is never before seen. There is a lot of this going on right now, the technologies phase and you know, all you have to do is just tell people what are those thing, that is it you know, you do not have to go into this big huge complex thing.

Level 2, the competition craze, right.

So as people begin to know more and more about your product and similar products come on in the market, you can think of this you know, think of Garcinia Cambogia right or really any weight loss supplement.

When it was first brought to light which I think it was on Dr. Oz show, basically, everybody you know, it came out and it was just new thing you know, level 1 introduction. Oh my God, Garcinia Cambogia, it is going to help you lose weight, blah, blah, blah, blah, okay.

And then it went onto the Dr. Oz show and it got huge, right, it blew up everybody (7:07.1) started selling it and you know, it is this new hot you know, amazing new supplement, it is going to help you finally melt off the ugly fat you know, blah, blah, blah.

So when this first started happening, everybody was selling this and everything was very, very, very hyphy right. That is kind of like when you see things that are super, super, super hyphy that is kind of the level 2 thing right, because everybody has you know, there is a lot of competitors and they are all trying to outbid each other essentially with the results that you know, that is going to get people.

So you might have seen a headline such as you know, this was not you know, the actual headline, but it could have been something like this simple pill melts off 10 pounds in 7 days or less, guaranteed right. That is kind of like a level 2 headline is you are talking about the results and how amazing they are.

Another one might be a new 372 horsepower engine makes new Corvette the best bang for your buck, right. So it is like a new thing very hyphy, very bold, all about the results that you are going to get in a very dramatic kind of fashion right. The problem with this stage is that they only last for a little bit because then everybody starts saying the same thing right. Everybody starts saying, oh, it is going to help you lose 10 pounds, then this new competitor, oh, it is going to help you lose 12 pounds, oh now you can lose 12 pounds in 3 days you know.

So it gets to the point where it becomes unbelievable right, and that is when it starts moving into level 3 and that is the unique mechanism right.

Now I want you to pay close attention to this one and the next one because especially this one because this is where most markets are right now is level 3, the unique mechanism.

So I want you to kind of pay special close attention to this one.

So this is where good copywriting really comes into play. You kind of get away with level 1 and level 2. You kind of get away with you know, kind of shitty copy writing because it is still pretty new and really all you have to do is talk about the results whereas the unique mechanism is you know, this is where you really need to have good copywriting coming in because it is really where the best marketers are going to stand out and where we copycats are going to start to you know, they are going to start to disappear a little bit right.

It is also the stage where the best actual products themselves begin to really shine and get a lot of momentum behind them because it is where people start talking about it a lot more.

So in this stage, as you may have guess, you begin to talk about the unique mechanism which makes your product or service get such incredible results. So instead of, well I give you an example in a minute right, but so instead of just saying what they get, you are going to actually tell them how it does it, how it gets those results right.

You are not quite shouting from the rooftop quite as much. You are going to bring down the hype a little bit in this one, but what you are doing is focusing on the finer details of exactly how it works, how it get those results right.

So you are moving into the you know, into the phase of using more proof and research to back up your claims, but also digging into like the you know, the finer or inner mechanics of your product or service right.

So here are the couple of examples right, so simple pill melts out 10 pounds in 7 days and then here is the unique mechanism by neutralizing carbs right, guaranteed and then the other one going back to the automobile one would be something like, new air induction secret adds 50 horsepower in under 10 minutes right, so it adds 50 horsepower in under 10 minutes well how does he do that, the new air induction secret right.

For the simple pill, how does it melt off 10 pounds in 7 days because it neutralizes carbs right. It disintegrates carbs. It eats up carbs like pac-man you know. However you kind of want to describe it right.

This is where -- this is where a lot of supplements are at this stage. We do tons of work in the alternative health space and this is where most of them are you know, it is kind of hard to find or sell a supplement where you are only talking about the results, right. You have to say why it get those results and talk about the ingredients, okay.

So again, you know, this stage it is all about what makes your product unique and again, if you have a service, what makes your service unique you know, it could be how fast you get the result or how easily or why you are able to sell it cheaper because of some new material you discovered you know, something like that. Think of graphene right, that is being used in cell phones more so that is going to be one of the big new kind of things coming out because it is bendable, alright, well this one is bendable, well how is it bendable, with graphene and blah, blah, blah use this much and you know, there is this crazy new glass and you know all that kind of stuff, right.

So then, the next level, is the feature frenzy, okay.

So this is where you start getting into bigger companies. Again, most companies that you know people listening to this are going to be in that, probably, like 2nd to 3rd level.

The 4th level is where you are starting to get into bigger companies you know. Think of like $10M plus or commodity type of products, things like that.

So by this stage, there are so many options for people that choices are starting to get harder. Think when you go to the grocery store and you are -- I remember I was just, I was looking at M&Ms right. I went to get an M&Ms for, we are having a party, this is I do not know probably, 2 months ago.

We are having a party and we were making these little dessert, it was like a pretzel and then I do not know you do something with it, some kind of, like a sticky type of thing, like a peanut butter or something, you (inaudible 13:17.9) over it and then you put an M&M on top of it, so it is kind of like a chocolate peanut butter pretzel kind of thing, really good by the way.

So I went in to get M&Ms and I went into the you know the part of the store where they have all the candy and all that. There were, I forgot how many -- they were like 11 different types of M&Ms. I actually could not find it. It took me like 5 minutes just to find just regular M&Ms and I actually never even ended up getting them. I ended up getting mini M&Ms, but you know, I was just trying to get normal M&Ms and I could not find them you know. Same thing with gold fish or crackers or you know, any kind of cookie you know, there is like 9 billion varieties. So this is what I am talking about in that kind of stage, right.

So in this stage, level 4, it is all about features, okay.

So you want your product to be faster, cheaper, more convenient, and have kind of a coolness factor that your competitors do not.

So think about if you create a comparison chart, you want your product to have several features that your competitors do not, right, that is you know, when you are doing comparison chart, it is kind of like if you imagine at the top, there is 3 or 4 different competitors, you are in the middle on the left, there is all the different features and you want the most you know, check marks in your column, right. That is kind of like what you are looking for here.

So here are the couple of examples.

Fusion ProShield Chill Razor with Flexball technology, right. So that is when I saw for shaving thing. So Fusion ProShield Chill Razor with Flexball technology, right. It is insane.

Here is another one that I got, I was getting waffle maker. I am actually excited. Me and my -- well, I am making -- one of our kind of staple dinners that we have here is chicken waffle so we do you know, Belgian waffles and then we get like a whole roasted chicken and put it in the crock pot all day and then put some gravy in it and put it over the waffles, oh, it is so good, oh my God, I love it. In fact, this is actually fairly healthy for you too in terms of you know, calories like macronutrients and then I like to eat a vegetable or two kind of with it, peas usually. I know it sounds weird, but it actually goes pretty good with it, but yeah, it is actually good.

Anyway, so T-fal EZ Clean Nonstick Sandwich and Waffle Maker with Removal Dishwasher Safe Plates, 2-Slice, Silver, right. So that was the headline on Amazon.

So you could see you know, T-fal EZ Clean Nonstick Sandwich and Waffle Maker with Removal Dishwasher Safe Plates, 2-Slice, Silver, okay. That is an example of the feature frenzy. They keep piling on these weird features most of which do not even do anything. Same thing like vacuums you know, most of technology anymore. Even the new phones, a lot of phones are in this stage you know, like smart phones you know, it is like, oh my God, you know it has whatever you can dunk in underwater or whatever, that one is actually pretty good, but you know, most of the features on these new phones anymore are totally useless, but it is a new selling point you know, they move the headphone jack or whatever, it is like you know, it is retarded but you know that is kind of the level where we at with smartphones right now.

So here is another one.

At 60 miles an hour, the loudest noise in the new Rolls-Royce comes from the electric clock, right.

So that is kind of the feature and that is actually not even the best example, I could have got a better one for that. That is actually more of level 5 emotional, I think.

So you know, but the point is, in this stage, you want like a thousand different features, right.

So if your competitors -- if you are in the stage again, probably not but you know, if you have a lot of competitors and you really cannot talk about results anymore and that is kind of getting outplayed then you start moving onto to the features okay.

The next level and the final level is the emotional play.

So the emotional play. Level 5 is all about emotions, okay.

So basically this point, you are selling a brand. You are selling your brand. You are selling an emotional appeal, right, and that is really what branding is. Is you know, your brand stands for something that appeals to people in emotional level, that is what that is.

If you think about Coke or if you think about you know, any of these big companies, they are selling emotions, right, and that is why they do not have long form sales pages anymore because they do not need them anymore, they already have the loyalty. All they are doing is just maintaining that brand you know, Coke, McDonalds, Wendy’s you know, whatever it is, KFC. They are promoting a brand. They want -- you want, at this stage, you want your audience to be part of something. You want them to viscerally feel some type of emotion.

So think about buying a Ferrari versus a Rolls-Royce or a Bentley you know, they are roughly the same price, right, but think about what each of those brands how it appeals to different people you know. Think of how is going to buy a Ferrari versus something like a Rolls-Royce or a Bentley. You want them for very, very different reasons, okay.

The emotional appeal is very different between those 3 brands. Also, think about something like a Harley-Davidson, right. Harley-Davidson, I mean honestly, their bikes are not really the best on the market, they are good bikes, but anybody who has a Harley is a die-hard fan, kind of like Apple, right.

Apple computers I mean, honestly, you know, I am a Mac kind of myself, so I feel like I can say this and without you know, pissing too many people off, they are not that much better than PCs right They are really not you know. They maybe a little bit more reliable or whatever, but you know, when you really compare it, I mean, it is like you know, fraction of you know percent better than things you can get and honestly you are over paying for most of the stuff with Apple products. Most of the reason that people are such Apple fans is not because they are better quality, right. It is because of the branding that Apple does because people want to be different you know, they want to be unique and it is actually a little bit ironic anymore because Apple is so popular now that you are really not, you really do not standout when you have Apple products because everybody else does. So their whole branding thing, I think they have to start redoing it a little bit because you know, it is kind of getting a little bit outdated you know, they have been doing it since like the 80s or 90s or whatever it was and that was huge back then like standout from the crown you know, be different all that stuff. It made sense then, but I mean, when everybody is using it, really it does not matter anymore you know, and again, I am saying that as a you know, as an Apple fan. So I am fully suck into their marketing.

I want you to just think about all these right.

How do you put this into your business even though you know, none of us are going to be you know, doing any promotions based on this level 5 emotional you know, emotional awareness. You can still put it into your brand, right. You can still put it into your marketing by having community and having things that make people feel like they are part of something. I do it in my copy all the time, right.

One last example.

Think about the American Express Black Card right. So it is an “owner” to get one of these right, even though you have to pay something around $7500 to get it plus $2500 a year, plus you have to spend $250,000 a year on the card.

So why would you do that and their interest rate is probably are not anything special. I know there is a lot of perks to it, but I mean, common, it does not, you know, it does not make out for what you are paying for. You have to pay $7500 just to get it for the privilege to have a credit card, and then you have to pay $2500 a year and you have to have a minimum fee right of $250,000 a year. Why, because of the way it makes you feel that you have an American Express Black Card right because you are special, you are unique you know, very few people can get that. I think it is like a half of 1% of people even you know, qualified for or something like that right.

It is the same thing as a golf membership, right. There is a golf membership by our house. One of the nicer ones in the area and it is like, it is something like $15,000 to join, right, and then not only do you have to pay them $15,000, but you still have to pay every time you golf, you have to spend I do not know, $1,000 a quarter or something like that at the restaurant, at the country club, right.

Why do people do that, right. I have no interest in that. I was actually going to get a social membership. They have a cheaper social membership, I do not play enough golf to even come remotely close to justifying the $15,000. I like to play golf like a couple of times a year, but I was going to get a social membership, but then I realized, I mean we barely even go there anyway, so there is really no point, but you know, why are people join membership so much like golf membership, country club so much, it is not because you know, it is that good of a golf course or whatever, it is because they can tell people that they are a member there. That is why.

Same thing with cars. Same thing with giant houses you know. It is the same thing regardless of what you buy. If you are buying something that is way above you know, it is like the high-end of things. Any kind of high-end products or service, you are selling emotions right. I mean, really, you are selling emotions with anything you sell, but you know, especially when it is the high-end of you know, the price range. You are selling emotions and you cannot forget that in your marketing right.

So anyway, what do you with this, right. Because there is no point in understanding market sophistication if you do not anything with it, right.

So the first thing is you know, number 1, if you are looking for a copywriter, make sure they know this because it is really important and very, very, very few copywriters even know -- they would not even be able to tell you, you know what these various stages are, and if they do not, do not hire them because the first thing that we do when we start a new project with the client is determine what level their market is at and then because what happens is let us say that they are level 2 about you know, the simple pill melts off 10 pounds in 7 days or less, guaranteed right. So let us say that they are there, but you are trying to sell you know, a feature frenzy you know, you are trying to sell them on all the features. That is not going to work because they are not at that level yet, okay. They are at a different level, okay.

Same thing with the buyer’s journey you know, I would not go into this. I will do a separate podcast on this, but you know, there is 3 levels of the buyer’s journey. There is problem awareness. There is a research phase and then there is a decision phase, okay.

If you are trying to sell them, just think of that one as warm or cold, right. So they are cold or brand new. They need to be educated, right.

If you are trying to give them the solution when they still need to be educated, you are not going to sell anything.

If you are trying to get them educated when they are ready to buy, did it ever have that happened to you when you are ready to buy something and somebody over sells you and tries to educate you too much, tells you (inaudible 25:53.8) things and then they say something, and it is like, Oh, well, I do not even need that. Did it ever have that happened to you, it happens to me all the time.

They are basically you know, like kind of under selling you or you know, false selling you or something like that, but you know, essentially, they do not understand your needs.

So you have to first understand -- think about your market which you know, which one, what level are they at, right. What stage are they at and then you have to focus your copy around that stage, okay.

Understanding what level that they are at dictates everything that you do. It dictates every strategy that you come up. It dictates how your copy reads, you know.

So figure this out first and then if you are doing your own copy, figure it out and then make sure that your marketing message match up to the market sophistication level that your market is at, alright.

So that is it for today. Once again, you know, as always, if you are enjoying this episode, make sure that you are sharing it with your friends, colleagues, family you know, whoever you think would like it you know, twit it out, Facebook it you know, whatever you like on social media and make sure you leave us a review. Remember we are giving our Conversion Cheat Sheet. It is a course I used to sell for $77. I am giving you that for free when you leave a review. All you have to do is just email us at [email protected] after you do that and as always, if you want to get in touch about working with us, I have I think probably 80% plus of my clients actually listened to the podcast. A lot of you guys are reaching out to me to see how I can help you with your funnel.

So if that is you, then reach out and we will see you know see if it is a fit. Otherwise, I hope you have a fantastic week. I will talk to you soon and we will see you next time.

In today's episode we dive into one of those "bland yet unbelievably important" topics - metrics. Metrics are the LIFEBLOOD of your business yet probably 10% or less of companies really track them properly and use them to grow their business effectively. In this episode I'll show you exactly what metrics to track, how, and how to use the data to skyrocket your business growth.

Listen To The Podcast

[powerpress]

Resources Mentioned

AdWords

Want To Work With Me?

Visit http://www.JeremyReeves.com or email me at [email protected]

Enjoy!

Transcript

Hey, what is going on guys, Jeremy Reeves here with another episode of the sales funnel mastery podcast.

And today, we are going to talk about something really exciting and that is Metrics. We all love numbers right.

So Metrics are the lifeblood of your business you know. There are so many businesses out there that do not understand their metrics and honestly one of the big you know, the big factors -- I mean talked to a lot of people everywhere you know, from people that are kind of just you know in the low 6 figure range all the way up to $300M companies, right.

I am actually working doing a project for Agora right now. I am trying to be one of their controls that is bringing -- actually, I am not allowed to say confidentiality wise the numbers, but basically, it is many, many, many, many, many hundreds of thousands per month you know, kind of call that.

So one of the big determining factors or one of the big differences that I see when I am talking to various levels of business owners is and I can see kind of how savvy they are as business owners. It is how well they understand their metrics, right.

So I have talked to some clients and you know, usually, when I talk to people the first questions that I start asking are you know, how much are you getting per lead you know, what is your cost per click. What is your cost per lead. What is your conversion rate. What is your like on your opt in page. what is your conversion rate on your sales page. What is your you know, average order value. What is your average customer lifetime value you know, all of these metrics are really, really important because if you look at business, all business is money in versus money out, right. That is really what it comes down. Money in versus money out.

If you are bringing in more money than you are spending, it is a good business. If you are -- you know, obviously that is relative. If you are spending more money than you are making, it is you know, you are not in a good situation and even with that, and I am sure everybody listening to this can agree of how important that is to know that because mean, you know, it is literally you know, it is kind of like you know, your health and you have no idea what is going on with your health. I mean, obviously, that is a bad situation you know, and that is when you get into trouble.

And you know, even with that, I am sure everyone listening can agree on that, that metrics are like one of the single most important things that you need to know in your business, and yet, very few people actually know them you know.

Think about your business, do you have a spreadsheet you know, calculating all of your various metrics in your business or at least something like analytics showing you, you know, the visitors you are getting, your conversion rates, you know, analytics can track all that on your website you know, things like that. If you are doing Facebook or AdWords, are you really tracking everything that you are doing so you know exactly what is working, exactly what keywords are working, what are not working, that kind of thing.

So I give you a couple of examples here. So I had a lady, she had a dog training business and she came to me and she is like you know, it is not working, I do not know what is going on, blah, blah, blah, you know, I bought this business and you know, it is not really you know, I do not know if this is the case, but I felt like she felt like the person who sold it to her kind of gave her like a crappy business.

It actually turns out, I actually sat with her and I you know, we put the numbers together and it actually turned out that the business was freaking phenomenal, right.

She was getting -- and this is with like pretty much no marketing experience just handed to her. She was getting 9 times ROI on her ad spent, but she did not know that because she was not tracking things properly you know and it is a huge mistake but it is so, so common that it is unbelievable.

You know, most business owners unless -- anybody under 7 figures it is almost rare for people to really, really, really, really have a really solid grasp of their metrics and the funny thing is, it is almost impossible to go above 7 figures if you do not know your metrics.

So it is kind of a weird you know, irony there.

So that is one thing. Another thing is that I am working with another client and I just had a meeting with him yesterday and you know, the topic was okay, you know, how do we keep you know, how do we continue to improve things. How do we continue to improve our metrics.

And one of the things that I said was, I said, okay, and their businesses is a little bit complex because they are bringing leads in for 1 business and they get a certain dollar amount for those leads, but then they are also using those leads in another one of their businesses.

So it is kind of -- it is more complex than you know, than the average kind of business and then there are also selling leads you know, that kind of thing. So there is a lot of different factors in play here, but I am going to try and keep it simple.

What I said was okay, you know, for the average customer that comes to your doors, how much are they worth to you, you know, long term and they said, well, kind of depends. And also another kind of wrinkle in here is they have an online and an offline funnel. So the funnels had different metrics, so the offline I think was worth $130 a lead or a customer and the online worth $180 or might be -- it does not really matter.

So I said, alright, let us at least you know, I do not think we are going to get this perfect, but let us at least get kind of the baseline, right. Let us at least get an estimate and say, okay, you know, let us just say that you know, they are worth $150 on average, at least, it is better than nothing you know, it is not a perfect kind of thing, but let us just say $150. Let us also put in a little bit of buffer in there, so let us just say, you know, they have to be worth you know, $130 or so to kind of be worth it to continue you know, getting those leads.

So essentially, what I said was, okay, let us pick a number, let us just say it is $150, I forget the numbers off on top of my head. I deal with a lot of different businesses, so I have all kinds of different metrics going on in my head right now.

So let us just say it was $150 just for you know, just for argument sake here.

So I said, alright, your average person’s worth $150, right. Now, what is your allowable cost per new customer, right. So how much do you want to profit because you do not want to spend $150 you know, to then make $150 over time. You are essentially just you know, getting a zero return and you are not even getting it back for like the next you know, a couple of months or year or whatever it is.

So let us just say we brought it down to you know $120, right. So the allowable cost is $120 to then make $150 in whatever the next 6 months or so, right. So they are making $30 you know, essentially, you know, 20% ROI over a 6-month period. Not great stats, but they are doing a lot of volume, so it is a little bit different when they are doing a volume (inaudible 7:32.1).

So I said, alright, so you are able to spend $120 per you know, customer that you bring in the door. So let us now look at your advertising and figure out what is working and what is not.

So we have your allowable cost per new customer, is $120, right. So I said, alright, their main advertising was AdWords, right, which makes it easy.

So I said, alright, let us now look at all of your keywords because your average -- I think her average was, I think it was $130 something like that, let us just say it was $130. So I said, alright, so if your average cost per new customers $130 that means that you have some keywords that you are probably getting new customers for you know $30 or $50 and you have other keywords that are probably going upwards of $200 to acquire new customer and what we are going to do is take that $120 right, and have a little bit of a buffer, but essentially anybody -- any keyword that it is costing more than $120 to acquire new customer we ditched them. We removed them and then all of the ones that were under $120 especially the lower ones, we are going to ramp them up as high as we can that way you can keep a similar volume right, you spend for the customers that are really profitable, we are going to go up a little bit but you are also getting rid of all of the customers that were not profitable, right.

So it is going to even out. So now you are actually going to end up spending much less money probably around 25% less, but you are still getting a similar amount of volume, right.

So your actual profit is 25% higher, obviously, you know, those are -- we literally just started this yesterday. So those are not real numbers. Those are just you know, kind of estimated numbers, but you know, that is what happens when you really understand your metrics, you can do things like that, like when you know, okay, I need to get leads in for $2 because I know that you know, one in ten leads is going to convert and -- just say one in twenty leads is going to convert 5% conversion rate and that means that, what is that, I forget the numbers.

I just finished up sending an appeal letter to the IRS, my brain is a little bit funky. They are trying to screw me up (inaudible 10:05.6) for something that was their fault, but anyway, so you know, we are getting leads for $2 each, one in twenty convert that means that is a 5% conversion rate that means that you are getting a new customer for $40 right.

So if you know that, then all you have to do is find advertising where you can find customers for less than $40 right. That is it, and maybe you know, whatever your numbers are maybe that customer is worth $80 over the next 3 months or 6 months or whatever it is, but all you really need there is your -- you have to know first of all what your lifetime customer value is and you have to define that.

So you can do -- I like to do a short term and a long term. So I like to do typically what is the customer worth in the first 30 days right because that is short term. I mean, you can -- most people can afford to you know, kind of have that cash flow going in 30 day periods right, without you know, drying up your bank.

And then I also like to look long term. So long term is very, very, very different for some people you know or for everybody you know. For smaller companies let us just say under 7 figures, that might -- long term might be 3 months right or maybe 6 months, depends on how much cash flow you have, depends on how profitable you are already.

For bigger companies so for you know, a couple of 100 million dollar companies for 8 figure companies even, you might stretch that out to 6 months or 12 months or 2 years or you know, some companies, they gauge their lifetime customer value over like a 5-year period right, but that is when you get into the really high number.

So let us just say that your short term is 30 days and your long term is just say 3 months right. So what is -- let us do 6 months actually because that is a little bit more realistic.

So alright, so what is your customer worth in the first 30 days, okay. So figure that number out then what are they worth in the first 6 months and what you will find is that if your new customer is worth and again, these are just hypothetical numbers, they are going to vary drastically in all different industries, all different businesses, I am just kind of throwing this out there.

So let us just say that your new customer is worth I do not know, $50 in the first 30 days, okay, but after 6 months, they are worth $100 right. So what you have to look at is okay, well, to be able to scale my business I can then spend $50 to acquire new customer because I know that I am getting that back in the first 30 days then you essentially break even on that customer the first 30 days.

Now the goal, I mean typically, when I do this, I try to break even on the first like 48 hours, but I am just using 30 days just you know, just a simple exam.

I like to typically and again, this depends on the client. It depends on your business. It depends on the goal of the you know, campaign that you are doing you know, because there is all different types of campaigns. There is lead generation campaigns. There is audience awareness campaigns. There is profit campaigns which is usually going back to customers. So there is all these different things to consider.

So then you say, okay, you know, so you know, and I have this advertising. I know that I am making $50 per customer in the first 30 days, but I am also making $100 in the first 6 months so is it worth it you know, then you have to look at -- so you have your lifetime customer value for 30 days and 6 months or 12 months whatever you want to do then you say, okay, so what I am willing to spend to get that customer. I know that they are worth $50 in the first 30 days and $100 in the first 6 months, okay and it is only going to increase in there, so they might be worth $200 in the first 2 years or whatever.

So then you have to say, okay, well, what ROI do I want. What is my allowable cost. So, maybe, if you are in a good cash flow situation, maybe you can do spend $50 to acquire the new customer and just break even in the first 30 days knowing that you are going to double your ROI you know, over the next 6 months right.

If you are kind of bootstrapping a little bit more you might say, okay, we are going to only focus on -- we are going to get super, super, super laser targeted and I can spend $30 to make in the first 30 days right, knowing that they worth $50, so you are going to essentially profit $20 per customer in the first 30 days and then $100 over the next 6 months, but you have to figure out your allowable cost and that is a little bit different for everybody, it depends on your risk level, it depends on your available cash flow, it depends on what advertising you are actually using. So all these different factors, right.

The whole point of this is that you have to know these numbers, right. So if you do not know these numbers that is the first thing that you should do.

Now if you are just starting you do not have to worry about it too much because you kind of have to find you know, your bigger play -- if you are in you know, the lower 6 figures like you know, just say 0 to I do not know $2 or $300,000, I would focus on a little bit more on really narrowing down your message, right. Your USP, your exact audience, your exact offer that you are giving them and why you are unique and special you know, different and all that kind of thing.

But if you are above you know, just say quarter million or so, you really, really, really, really, really, really need to start focusing on your metrics and really get a good grasp on them because when you know your metrics it opens up everything because then you know exactly what your promotions have to convert. You know exactly how much money you can spend. You know exactly how much money is going to be in your bank you know, if you are paid traffic at least because when you are doing paid you know, and that is kind of the holy grail when you can make traffic work to paid traffic then you know that, hey, if I spend $10,000 this month that means I am going to make just like $12,000 in the first 30 days, I am going to make $20,000 in the next 6 months and you can actually predict how fast you are going to grow with your business, right. So I hope that all make sense.

So that is my (inaudible 16:27.3) for today, as always, if you enjoyed this episode or this podcast in general, make sure you are telling your friends about it. If you are on any Facebook forms or you know, whatever you are on you know, make sure you tell people about it so we can kind of grow the community a little bit more. Like I said, it has been growing really, really fast lately, basically it doubled in the last 2 months or so which is awesome, I am really excited about that and it makes me want to continue to do it.

Also, if you leave a review that is going to help us grow the fastest, it only takes like 30 seconds and you know, it would just be you know, if you really enjoyed this, it would be a huge favor to me if you just leave a review on itunes. Again, it takes like 30 seconds and it would be a giant favor to me. I spent a lot of time putting these together and thinking about it and for going out and finding guests and all that kind of fun stuff, so it would be a huge favor to me plus it is only in your best interest because I am going to send you my 101 Conversion Tips free if you leave a review.

All you have to do is just leave a review and then shoot me an email [email protected] letting me know that you left a review and will send you that over.

I actually got a -- I got an email from someone the other day that did that and he looked through the 101 Conversion Tips you know, PDF, and he said -- he was like, oh my God, I cannot believe you are giving away this for free. He said, I actually feel bad for going through this because you need to be charging money for this you know, so and I used to. I used to charge $77.

The reason by the way that I am giving away for free right now, it is not going to be forever. The reason that I am right now is because some of the things in their not all, but you know, there is a 101 Conversion Tips and probably, I do not know, 15 maybe are a little bit outdated, things that you know, used to work or old formats, things like that and I just have not updated it yet.

I used to do my site on HTML with Dreamweaver and all that and since I switched over to well, thrive that I am using now it you know, basically, I just have not move that product over. So it is something I used to sell for $77 and basically just have -- I just need to update it and then started selling it again, but again, I am giving it away for free simply because out of laziness, I do not really have anything else that I could think to give you. So I am just giving it away that because I thought it would be cool, but yeah.

So anyway, leave a review. Tell your friends and I will talk to you next time. I hope you enjoyed it. Bye.

In this episode, we chat with Nate Smith. Nate is pretty new to the entrepreneur game yet was able to 8x his business in a SINGLE year. We talk about exactly how he did that, what he learned through his experience and so much more!

Resources Mentioned

http://www.8020marketingguy.com/jeremy/

Want To Work With Me?

Visit http://www.JeremyReeves.com or email me at [email protected]

Enjoy!

Transcript

Jeremy Reeves: Hey everyone, Jeremy Reeves here back with another episode of the sales funnel mastery podcast and today I have on the line, Nate no name. I was actually just doing his intro and forgot his last name for a second. So sorry about that Nate.

Nate Smith: Yeah, I think, actually I am going to go with that, it is probably better for SEO.

Jeremy Reeves: Yeah, right. Nate no name. So his name is Nate Smith and Nate is a former professional musician who decided to get into online business 4 years ago. He launched his first successful product in January of last year, 2015, and since doing that has grown his profits 8 times over the course of basically of last year.

So now since he has got that experience actually doing it for himself, he decided to help other entrepreneurs kind of do the same thing and earn more from their existing audiences typically by improving conversion rates of their funnels, kind of like what I do.

So Nate has worked with authors such as Taylor Pearson, author of The End of Jobs and he also works with a lot of startups.

So we are going to get in to all that, but before we do, Nate you know, welcome to the show and tell everybody a little bit more about yourself and a little bit about your story.

Nate Smith: Yeah, thanks so much for having me and hopefully this would not devolve into me just picking your brain for an hour because I am a little bit star struck at the moment. I am talking to the man. I am talking to the conversion rate guy.

So yeah, my journey is -- as Jeremy said, I was a professional musician and you know, 5 or 6 years ago I decided that I was sick of working a day job and sick of kind of playing in the same stand box as everybody else, like I had an inkling that everyone was competing for pieces of a shrinking pie, but I did not exactly know what to do yet and then through some friends and through a couple of books I read, I learned about entrepreneurship. I learned that this was a thing and I was still kind of skeptical about it, so I had read 4 Hour Work Week and then I was actually at that time considering applying to Stern Business School because I was working a day job at NYU and I am like, you know what, this whole entrepreneur stuff sounds pretty scammy, but let me just try it like an experiment and then even if it goes totally (inaudible 2:31.4) and still right about it as a case study to apply to business school.

And about 2 months in I was like, hang-on a second, this might be a thing and by the end of the first 6 months, I was like, yeah, there is no way I am spending money for business school after this.

But it was still another 3 years before I actually saw like money coming into my bank account in a really validating way like 4 figures just boom overnight in my back account and then you know, finally I could pay off the credit cards and it is maybe the one time in my life when the actual experience has paid off in the way that I have been anticipating for it to pay off, you know how things are, it is like you think, yeah, when I get up to this plateau, that will be amazing in the (inaudible 3:21.8) it was not really all that.

So I wanted other people to feel that way so I have definitely been super bullish on turning around and helping other people get their businesses started, so you know, I am a member of a few networking groups and over the course of 2015, I was growing my business and I was trying all these things with my primary business with my course to like grow my profits.

So I had realized first of all that traffic growth was just going to be a long haul, like it was going to be a slow you know, careful strategy, it was going to be content, it was going to be all these other things, but the thing at my disposal, the thing that I had control over was conversion rate.

So just by like changing an email sequence or writing a better sales page or you know, here is a shocker, asking people why they did not buy things. I could make interventions to my business that would in the course of like 2 weeks, cause like multiplicative effect

So it all kind of came into my head at the beginning of this year when I have been blogging about it and writing about it on the entrepreneur forums and one of my friends who has startup called Bobsled Marketing which helps founders get the products on Amazon and by the way she is booming up now. She is like, she is on track to hit 7 figures this year which is amazing, but she hired me to help her with her funnel, I was like, wow.

So could this be a thing and then you know, 6 to 9 months later and a handful of clients later this is kind of what I do now. This is what I am doubling down on.

So it has been a super quick journey from successful solopreneur to conversion consultant and I tried to be humble and realistic about what I actually really know and that has been a lesson. It is like what can I guarantee that I will be able to do for you and just you know, continuing to learn but also like fine honing that deliverable further consulting clients.

So within the realm of the things that I have direct experience with and you know, can fairly well guarantee that they will get value from.

Jeremy Reeves: Yeah, you know, and that is a good plan. I mean always, I always -- in fact, I actually just send out a proposal this morning to a guy, Torquhil if you are listening, Hi, how are you, but you know, it is Torquhil, I have never even asked him how to pronounce it. I am going to have to, but anyway, so I was talking to him, I do not know, last week or the week before about you know, kind of us working together and that kind of thing and I was kind of explaining to him that when I work with people -- that is what I do like I always look for, okay, what can I -- because there is you know, it is marketing, it is not you know, in most cases, you cannot say, okay, I am going to do this and it is 100% absolutely guaranteed going to work you know what I mean.

A lot of times like me and you with paid traffic, a lot of times you think that thing is bad ass, it is going to blow up out of the water and then you launch it and it just does not, you know (inaudible 6:47.1) face.

In most cases, there are parts that work, parts that do not work and overall, it either works or it does not work you know what I mean, and but I was you know, when I am working with clients too is like okay, there is going to be all this stuff and my first kind of thought in my head when I am working with some new is how do I get them. They are going to pay me X amount of dollars, just say, whatever $10 or $5 or $20 or whatever it is you know, just say $10, so alright, they are paying me $10, how do I like get that back to them as soon as humanly possible you know what I mean.

And that is just you know, working with people, I would definitely recommend looking at that way like you just said, like you know, what can you do that is going to get them kind of like a guaranteed result you know what I mean and sometimes you can set up your service where the whole services like that and then other times in our case like a conversion rate optimization, it is you know, not every test wins you know what I mean.

I just had let us see from (inaudible 7:48.6) there are 2 failures in a row and then the third one won you know what I mean, but it is just you know, you have to look at it as more of an overall kind of thing and then if you know, if it does not work, then you do the right thing and you know, and kind of keep going until it does get them the result you know what I mean, but yeah, sometimes it takes some testing you know.

So like with that in mind, with the whole like testing and things do and do not work and it takes a while sometimes and all that, let us go back to your success like when you grew your business you know, you were doing certain things you know in the beginning and you could kind of tell us of what things were not working in the beginning and then you know so when you grew it that much last year, you know, what were some of the things that did and also did not work as you were growing like that.

Nate Smith: Yeah, 100%. So between the unsuccessful products I launched and the first successful one, there were 2 things that work. Number 1 was building a content platform and in this case it was Youtube and for different verticals it is going to be a different thing. I think for a lot of business-related verticals it is still probably blogging, but so I had that kind of cache of trust and then the second thing was simple validation.

So I know there are a lot of people like Ryan Levesque, who just test this down to (inaudible 9:13.3) but you do not necessarily need to be that scientific about it. I really just had a list big enough of people who already trusted me from my content and surveyed them about what it was that they wanted. What needs they have that I was not filling and I got an email that was kind of like the golden nugget which is the thing that I now like, I always hope for with clients because it is sort short cuts the whole process and if you heard it a few times so much the better but it was an email that said, why are you wasting your time trying to build X for us. Why don’t you just sell us why and I was like oh, crap, alright, that is the move.

So then the next thing that I did that now I am just adamant with clients you know, I cannot guarantee results unless we do this was that I sent kind of preliminary sales letter to people like so I imagine the product in its finish state before I build the thing and we are kind of sales page for it via email. There are different words for this I think teaser is another word.

Actually, I am doing this right now with Taylor Pearson but the important part was I named the price point and I said only click this link if you are interested, and so it is not 100% guarantee that people, who click the link will buy. In fact, I think probably something like 35% to 40% of the clickers eventually converted, but it will give you a quick warning if something is not going to sell before you dump a bunch of time into it.

So I launched the product successful in January that was amazing, yeah it converted at about 35% or 40% of the cohort that I launched it to which just boomed me away and then the challenge became how do I make this evergreen and how do I grow it.

So to sort of return to the initial question you asked which was what were the intervention levers that proved most lucrative, that moves the needle amongst all the things I tried that did not succeed.

So the first one believe it or not was the copywriting and the timing of the emails in the launch sequence and the scarcity element. So scarcity obviously means you are not offering your product just permanently available on a sales page. People need to sign up at a certain time in order to participate in the launch and if they missed that opportunity then they have to wait you know, months, weeks, or whatever. People do that in different ways. A lot of people do it through sales, but I would say (inaudible 11:59.6) Jeff Walker and in more modern circles, people like (inaudible 12:05.0) and David Siteman Garland who were like, nope, I do not do sales. I will just control when people can and cannot get into my courses.

So I implemented that and when I finally figured out how to do that in an evergreen way so that everyone as they subscribed through my list had an opportunity to buy based on their behavior you know, based on their engagement levels but somewhere between 2 weeks to a month after they subscribed to my list that move the needle a lot. So that was the big one.

And then after that, I doubled my revenue again by putting a nurture and a re-engagement sequence. So I learned an important lesson about sales cycle and this is something folks like Dean Jackson and Joe Polish talked about all the time which is like, only a small (inaudible 12:54.8) of your people are going to (inaudible 12:56.4) and buy it right off the bat, but that does not mean that they are not eventually can buy.

So I tried to get really scientific about calculating where the sweet spot of the sales cycle was, like when are most people willing to buy and after what point, what is the point of diminishing returns after which. If someone has not bought by now odds are they are never going to buy it. So I am not worried about offending them by hitting them with future sales pitches.

So those two and then I think probably the final one was just sales page copywriting. So believe it or not, like for about 6 months, I just had a totally garbage sales page and you know around July or August of last year I decided -- and yeah this illustrates you know for you and for everybody how green I am still at it but you know, got to be real about it. Yeah, I decided. I need to write a sales page. So I just went to school on it you know, I just studied all of my favorite sales pages from all the lists that I was subscribed to.

People were doing scarcity launches. I made sure that I participated in the launch so that I could screenshot their sales page and study it. I read you know, a few books that friends recommended on it and basically you know, locked myself in my room for an entire week and wrote a sales page and I tested it in optimizely and it was like 2x. So that was the big one. So I think those are kind of the big 3.

Jeremy Reeves: Okay, got you. Yeah, and a lot of it really does like it is not -- with most of business, it is really not rocket science you know what I mean. It is not like you did some crazy things that nobody has ever heard off and you know I mean it is really just you know, you gave them a really good offer like with scarcity and all that included and you had good copy on the page and did a lot better you know.

It is really not, it is not anything new. It is just you got to -- just do the work you know and get it done you know.

So what was wrong with your -- cell phone is going on, I forgot to turn on silent. Actually it does on silent, and it is still going on.

Nate Smith: Oh please is that an emergency.

Jeremy Reeves: No my phone has been dying on me. I need a new one. I am lazy of buying cell phones.

Nate Smith: (inaudible 15:18.6) they are expensive.

Jeremy Reeves: Yeah, well, I am too lazy to switch it over you know what I mean which is also another good kind of marketing point. It actually comes back to scarcity you know, that is a lot of times why people respond to scarcity is because it is just, they know they need it. It is like, you know I am going to get it, I am going to get it and then it is on sale or you are getting free bonuses or it is going away or whatever and just that well, you know, you can get it now on its half price or you know, if you do not buy it now, it is not going to be available for 6 months or whatever then it gets people over the hump you know what I mean.

So the phone call actually leads into a good kind of you know message.

Nate Smith: Yeah, 100%. I think the scarcity and the limited opportunities to join combined with a deliverable that is on demand and sort of self-paced like this is one reason why I am so bullish on courses as deliverables right now as alternatives to say SAS or services. I think it is just a super easy way to get your value at there and let people pay for it and then get value from it on demand like Netflix or something. So (inaudible 16:36.9) if someone is on the fence and they were like yeah, you know, I may not need this for another month, but I might not have another opportunity to join for 6 months. I think that is really important element.

Jeremy Reeves: Yeah. So when you were -- when you do all this -- so now you, you know, you revamp your copy. You added scarcity in there, everything you just talked about and then so what did you do for on a traffic side of things because we have been talking about conversions, you know, what were some of the things you did on the traffic side of things to help kind of get that 8x number in there.

Nate Smith: Okay, so yeah, my traffic did double in that year, so that is why you know, from writing ads from my consulting I am careful to say like conversion rate optimization is responsible for 4x of the 8x, but so there are few things that worked. Number 1 was just continuing to make content and being pretty strategic about the content that I made. So it was like once --

Jeremy Reeves: (inaudible 17:38.8) into that more, definitely. That is something that very few people talked about. I did a guest post on it, I do not know may be 2 or 3 months ago for I do not even remember who was it for. I read a lot of articles. But you know, it is something very few people talked about it. It is just everybody is just, oh, I know more traffic, I need more traffic, I need more traffic and I was actually just on podcast and we are talking about the difference between quality of traffic and quantity of traffic you know what I mean.

So yeah, so dig into that more and let us talk about that a little bit.

Nate Smith: Okay, I have a got a lot of thoughts and quality and quantity of traffic. In fact, I just wrote a blog post today and I saw this when I started my own business, but I am also seeing it with clients. So one thing that I discover actually which is sort of helping me get over some of my mindset hurdles as a consultant because you think, oh, this person is a 7 figure company with like 25 employees like what can I tell them, it is like well, that is why they are getting someone from the outside to come in because a lot of these startups will have what I call KPI silos, and actually that is one reason I was super excited to talk to you is because when I have heard you on the podcast, you are really bullish on this kind of holistic approach to the funnels, it is like what is your acquisition cost. What is your lifetime value, I do not want to hear about anything else that is not going toward either of those bottom lines, but what happens is you have people measuring click through rate from an Ad in isolation and then opt in conversion rate from a landing page in isolation.

And you will end up attracting bad traffic and the reason why is, if you are not tying everything back to how profitable somebody is, I actually came up with this idea of like 3 customer avatars right. So it is like I am starting to run paid traffic to my landing pages to get people on my list and to sort of experiment with you know customer avatars and pivots for both my consulting and future products right.

So I am running paid traffic to my list and I am noticing that there are 3 sort of types. So one I like to call Craigand you know apologies for anybody is Craig out there, maybe it is from Craig’s list, sorry Craig, but Craig works at a holistic (inaudible 20:00.7) and his brother works at Microsoft and he is interested in being an entrepreneur, but he is not really an action taker.

So Craig sees my offer on Facebook and it says, my lead magnet which is 3 simple steps that helped me 4x my earnings you know, download the few part, it is like (inaudible 20:23.2) so if I optimize for click throughs I am going to get a bunch of Craigs, but the thing you do not know about Craig is as soon as he is on the landing page, he needs to enter in his email, he is like, ah, I do not know what the privacy and everything and like, how do I know I can trust this guy and am I getting a text and he is off (inaudible 20:41.5).

So you could spend $1000 optimizing for getting Craigs to your page and you would have zero to show for it, but maybe you decide you want to optimize for conversions. That is what all the paid traffic people are like, right. Like just optimize for conversions bro. So it is like, cool. So you are optimizing -- you put a pixel on your thank you page after your opt in.

So now you got Pete and Pete likes to order body building supplements and he is actually had 1 foot in the day job and he has been trying to start a business for like the last 3 years. The problem is Pete does not like to invest in long term solutions. He has got kind of shiny objects in general. So now, Adwords and Facebook and Bing Ads or whatever you are running to your page is selecting for Pete because yeah, Craig will click, but Petes are the people who are converting.

So if you optimize for Pete, sorry, (inaudible 21:38.0), but anyway, if you optimize for Pete you are going to write a very different landing page. You are going to have a landing page with an attractive model. It will say something like 3 report reveals the secrets to 5 million dollar success and Pete is all about that. He is going to opt in all day, but then the problem is you are not going to sell anything to Pete further down the line.

So the point is those are the 2 top stages of the funnel and if you take this kind of traditional segmented stage by stage approach to things you might be ignoring Shiva, who is a partner in a 6 figure startup, who realizes that she is losing 4 to 5 figures a month just because of conversion rate attrition in your funnel and maybe 1 out of every 100 Shivas aren’t put off by the ad or the landing pages and good damn thing because when she finally sees your content and your copy she is great. She loves it, but the problem is you need to spend $1500 to get just 1 sale if you are optimizing for the wrong things.

So why not start from who actually bought your stuff and find more of those people. So you are viewing click through rate as a function of again like how much does it actually cost me to acquire someone who is eventually going to buy, like I do not care about anyone else. If you are doing opt in you know conversion rate through the same filter.

So you start with your funnel conversion rate, right. Like, is a 2% or above great, raise your prices. Is it below 2%, okay, now let us look at your opt in conversion rate, right, like it is a 10% to 15% across your property. Okay, if it is great, then we want to look at your sales conversion rate, but if it is not that you know, we want to do some of the common you know, opt in conversion rate optimizations like optimizing your landing pages to make the offer clear and making the button clear and like putting the -- putting super clear CTAs on your content pages, etc.

Once you have those 2 dialed in, then you can go further inward and say okay, now it is time to look at the copywriting, the persuasion, all of that stuff, but that way, you are not going to end up spending a bunch of time and resources optimizing for people occupying spaces on your mailing list who are not eventually going to buy.

Jeremy Reeves: Yeah, you know, it is -- like you were saying before how I look at kind of you know, all the KPIs and the actual matrix and stuff like that of the actual buyers you know, I am working with a company now and we are split testing a couple of different leads for VSL that we are doing and so they came back and they were like, okay, you know, here are some of the results, blah, blah, and I was like, okay, well how are you like just kind of confirm how are you getting these results and they said, oh, we are looking at page views like engagement on the video. I am like, okay, that needs to stop right now.

Let’s go back, we have to do this on the actual sales you know, so now like, they did not really realized that and I should be the one that was setting it up, really, but -- so now, you know, we are going back and we are going to start retesting all those different things based on sales you know because it is kind of like if you look at emails, a really good kind of way to make this applicable is -- look at your email rates and if you know, so for example, I have another client that we just put in a -- which was the first one, it was a prospect campaign.

So prospect campaign, there was not one in place before we put one in for people basically who abandoned shopping cards, it kind of like a 2 step process and people who only went through the first step, we put an end to try to get them to complete second step.

Nate Smith: Oh, I cannot wait to hear this because I am working on the same thing.

Jeremy Reeves: Yeah, yeah, so basically, what we did was we look and we put tracking code in for each of the emails to track the actual results of each individual email, not like the sequence itself, but each individual email and we found that you know emails number 1 and number 5 were converting like bought like head and shoulders above the other ones.

So you know, if you look and you look it at that way, I mean, I do not even know the open and the click through rates because they do not matter that much you know, like how many podcast and things have you talked about it and oh, you know, I got a 40% open rate. I got whatever percent click through rate.

How often do you actually hear people say, well, you know, I am getting X percent of sales from this email you know what I mean. It is like --

Nate Smith: I go this client, he is getting clicks for like a penny a click, it is like, great, but what is his conversion rate (inaudible 26:34.6) zero sales.

Jeremy Reeves: Yeah. So you know, it is just you know, people when you are doing this and like you were talking about before, you have to look at it -- you have to look at each step of the funnel and kind of analyze that is what it is like you know, when I talked about kind of fixing your funnel. That is one of the first things we look at is okay, you know the funnel is doing whatever right now, either it is not converting or it is a breakeven or it is profitable, either way you still want to optimize it, does not really matter.

I mean sometimes if it is converting like horrifically bad, then you just kind of scrap the whole thing and start over, but if it is showing life and you started to optimize it I mean all you really do is look, okay, start at the beginning, click through rate, how is that doing. Does it meet our kind of you know, benchmark our you know, baseline criteria, yes.

Okay, next thing, opt in rate. Okay, next thing, sales page you know, and just look through the whole sequence and if you find the weak point in any of those areas it kind of gives you a hint of where to look you know, it is kind of like you know, a lot of marketers where really jus detectives you know. If you find you know, gun residue or whatever happens when you shoot a gun, you know, if you find that or if you find you know, bullet casing or something, well it tells you, it gives you a place to start to you know, do your detective work you know.

Nate Smith: Right. And as much experiences that you have, you probably start to get kind of a spidey sense about, does this feel right or not.

Jeremy Reeves: Yep, yep. I go a lot off my gut actually, but yeah, and you know, that is you know, one thing that people like it seems like a common them in like what you have done to grow your business so fast. You just look and say, okay, you know, what is happening here, okay, that is doing fine. Let us move to the next thing, okay, well, then you got to your you know, when you are looking at it, you said you got your copy and you said, oh, that is not doing good. So then you -- you know, start it there and you work and tweak that made it better you know.

And now you know, -- actually, it takes me to my next point. What is -- what is your kind of next steps with that business. So you already you know, took it 8 times you know, what is the next step. What is the next on the plate you know, what are you going to start looking at next to grow it even further.

Nate Smith: Yeah, great question.

So that (inaudible 28:54.2) is my primary business and I continue to improve the products I have for sale and I continue to create content and grow the audience, and in Q2, speaking of working with Taylor, he pushed me because we are selling his effectiveness productivity coaching product. So I took the product because I have the copy ready for it. So one of the thing is that you are supposed to chose a single goal for 90 days.

So for Q2, my goal was become a 6 figure consultant. So most of my best efforts, my best brain glucose in terms of growth is gone into helping to serve my clients as well as I can and learning as much as I can from them and also to sort of build a content and authority platform in the conversion rate and funnel vertical, but the great thing is I allowed myself one avenue or one activity with the primary business and that was content and traffic.

So actually by restricting what I can work on that has made me sort of more creative about it. So it is like, alright, I can only do traffic over at the primary business which by the way is the 80/20 Drummer, he was a professional drummer so I monetized my music skill.

So what has worked well in traffic, things like joint ventures on Youtube, right, where someone else has a Youtube channel with some traffic and I feel like they are good fit for my audience, so I invite them on my channel and we will do a collaboration.

And even if they do not reciprocate, which a lot of times, they do, it is still a great way to increase the exposure for both of us because a lot of times they will share the video with their audience.

So yeah, it has been primarily traffic and incremental product improvement over on the 80/20 Drummer side, but I am learning so much from working with consulting clients that it will be fun to try to apply some of these lessons I am learning like for instance, the Ryan Levesque thing, right, like go back and find the people who have not bought anything from you and survey them and find out if there is any you can serve for them so then you will have another product or the Perry Marshall upsale thing.

Like how many people would be willing to pay 4 figures for some sort of in person event is that power curve from 80/20 sales and marketing. So that stuff has been fun to think about.

Jeremy Reeves: Yeah, nice, nice. I kind of do that too because there is only, and I can relate because one of side businesses actually, I am actually working on it today, because we are doing a big launch next week. So it is one of my you know, usually -- I only work on it either nights or weekends and it is kind of the same thing. It is like, it is not -- it is not making enough that it is like, it does not even compare to what I make with like in a consulting side of things, but it is like I mean, like 100% passive you know what I mean. I spend like half hour a month on it. If I am not doing marketing stuff like (inaudible 32:10.3) I just let it run and it is like half hour a month.

That is kind of how I am like I found and I was just kind of analyzing what I work on with that business versus consulting business and I found that I am a lot more focus and I am even with the consulting like I am very focused. I have weekly like kind of meetings with myself, like I analyzed my habits on a weekly basis and so I am still very focused in what I do in everything, but even with Keno or the side business, I have noticed that like, I mean, when I work on that, I know that I only have like an hour, 1 night, or when the kids are sleeping on Saturday or something like that and it is just like I mean in that hour, I get done so much work, it is insane, you know what I mean.

Nate Smith: That is amazing.

Yeah, it makes me wonder actually if having a entrepreneurial venture that you started on your own is positively correlated with success and sort of velocities to success as a consultant. I wonder because obviously like we both the learned the lessons about business from doing it ourselves, but I have also found that having the cash flow from the original business has allowed me to be long-term outcome dependent, but yeah, short-term outcome dependent with the consulting.

So I am not necessarily nervous on any individual sales call and I am kind of in the psychology of like seeing if something is a good fit rather than hard-selling somebody.

Jeremy Reeves: Yeah, I like it. Yeah, that is a good point you know. It comes back to kind of you know, a foundational marketing principles to think strategic long-term rather than just kind of short-term promotions.

I actually just took a -- one of my clients, she was kind of short-term, just did promotions every couple of months and -- that was one of the things that I focused on with her was, okay, let us get away from that and let us put this into like more of an evergreen thing and she is up to like $1500 a day now from just kind of making that switch from the you know, like just a promotional business to like an actual you know, like long-term kind of focus and having perpetual traffic and sales and all that kind of stuff.

Nate Smith: Yeah, that is awesome.

Can I ask you a quick question. I am sorry.

Jeremy Reeves: Oh yeah, go ahead.

Nate Smith: So, I am curious about something which is earlier in the call, you were talking about how you like to be really outcome focused on behalf of your clients. In terms of -- they hire you for a broad objective to create value in their funnel, and I noticed the same thing especially with a couple of clients lately where it is like, they will hire me to accomplish a goal, right, like improve conversions for this thing, but the particular means that we think are going to be the one to succeed, may not actually be the thing that succeeds.

So just for instance, the cart abandonment email sequence. So I had to look at that and then I am like, you know, these emails are not bad. Let me see the checkout page and I am like, well I cannot even find the shipping form on the checkout page. Let us just put this above the fold.

So my question for you is, what happens for you with clients when -- I guess how do you allow in your arrangements for projects where the scope might quickly change because you need to pivot quickly, because it turns out something different than what you originally anticipated is the best way to accomplish the goal.

I hope that phrase -- is that okay.

Jeremy Reeves: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That is a good question. I think this is kind of a good thing for anybody in the service industry to hear you know, what I do is, I always look, when I am talking to somebody on the phone, I am always in my head like okay, what is the best win here. What is the easy win you know, what is the best way to essentially accomplish a goal for the money they are paying me you know, that is kind of like the filer that I have at all times when I am talking to people.

So we usually go ahead and do that and it basically either works or does not work you know, there is really no like it kind of half works like you really either just, it works or does not.

So you know, in most cases, it will work and revenue goes up and everybody is happy and all that, but in the times that it does not work what I do is because yeah, sometimes when you are working on the project, because you only have you know, you only talk to the client for whatever 30 minutes or whatever on the phone, so you really do not get that deep of an understanding of their business. So if things come up, if the first project works then I will say, okay, here is -- and a lot of times at the beginning we have -- we kind of have mapped out the phase 1 and phase 2 you know what I mean, because a lot of people like to start with something a little bit smaller to get the win, to get like that, just that confidence you know what I mean, and then it is like, okay, let us do this and then the second thing after that is we are going to do this.

So if the first thing does not turned out as plan, what I typically do is go back and look for something that is going to get that like easy win you know, that quick win, that it is like maybe it was like a smaller piece of you know, like a smaller project that was not really -- it did not really like it was, it was -- something that would definitely win, but it was not really, it would have made sense to go in the original scope of the project. If that make sense, I am not really sure for being clear.

Nate Smith: No, no, I get it.

Jeremy Reeves: Yeah, yeah, and then go back and then say, like, okay, you know, you paid me X dollars that did not really work unfortunately, so let us go back, let us at least get you a win you know, because I hate, it drives me nuts to even just thinking about the fact that somebody pays me money and they do not make a return on that you know what I mean.

So I always look at -- that is kind of how I go about it is looking at you know, looking at what has the best possibility of getting them their money back and obviously you know, a big return on their money. Obviously, you know, the goal is to maximize their return

And then you know, if it just does not work which you know, all these and marketing happens once in a while, then you go back and say, okay, well, what is another area that we are just going to add it, it is going to be a definite win. Usually, it is not something that is going to take like a month to do it, something smaller. Could even be, I mean, I have even done things simple as, okay, let us do a promotion you know, to at least get your -- like I will write up the emails for you. Make the sales page whatever which those are usually pretty quick and easy sales page and run that and that way at least you know, the thing that we originally thought was going to work did not work, but at least this way, you are still getting return you know what I mean.

So that is kind of how I -- that is kind of how I approached it you know and I think it comes back to just doing business to help other people you know. I think that is applicable whether you have a product, whether you have a service, a SAS, I mean whatever it is.

You should always be in it. People should be paying you money and you should get them a return on that money and you know, we are in business, so it is a financial return but it could be health, it could be you know, whatever it is.

They should be getting, they should be getting kind of a specific outcome from you know working with you, you know. So that is kind of my thought process I guess on all that.

Nate Smith: Yeah, that is great.

Jeremy Reeves: Yeah. So yes, let us go -- we will wrap it up. Let me ask you this. If there is, if there is one thing, I try to think of the way to -- I try to think of a way to word it that it make sense you know, looking back over your past you know year wow it has been a year and a half, it still kills me. I am still not used to be in the middle of the year already.

Seriously, this year is flying by.

So looking back over the last you know, a year and a half, you know, things were not working out until then, all of the sudden you know, it just turned on, the things started working and then you went -- for the success from the product and now you know, you are starting to get into the consultancy side of things and things are starting to you know move along. Is there any like one thing that you can look back and say if I did not do that, none of this would have happen like that one -- was there any like kind of one pivot point you know what I mean that kind of made everything shift.

Nate Smith: Yeah, 100%, that is a great question.

Yeah and actually, so let me first answer that and then I will very quickly review in your audience with what I do now to try (inaudible 41:05.5).

So yeah, in November of 2014, I was in that and I have been spinning my wheels in this niche, the music niche, and I had products for sale, but they were low price, they were not converting to pretty well and I kept seeing other things that I might want to jump into like, oh you know, maybe I should just help people make videos on Youtube or I forgot, oh yeah, maybe I should just blog, maybe I should just be a travel blogger or something like that and so I really had no faith that it was going to work out and it was almost accidental that just out of frustration that I decided to send that email to my list about okay you know, this clearly is not working, so what can I do for you, and that was the spark about oh, maybe I can actually build this for them.

So yeah, and then, when that was -- like even after (inaudible 42:12.3) even after I had that validation, I still needed a push across the finish line actually really shipped the product and so I had mentor who was pretty stern with me about what are you doing, why are you dragging your feet. You need to ship and so he challenged me to launch and like the next 2 weeks, he is like I am going to call you 2 weeks from now and if you have not launch, we are going to have words.

So that was the other big one and I see now why he wanted to do that because he needed to drag me across the finish line to give me that feeling that dopamine of something succeeding so that I would know what that felt like and be able to chase it and try to recreate it in the future.

So now the question I asked myself and speaking of doing the daily and weekly (inaudible 43:01.6) journaling, you mentioned you were doing that too, but one thing I like to ask myself is, what am I assuming is impossible just because it has not succeeded yet.

Jeremy Reeves: I like that. I might write that down actually. Yeah, I like that. It is a good way to -- I am usually pretty good with like you know, mindset thing and not really putting limits on myself on that, but I like that. I think that would help a lot of people.

Nate Smith: Yeah, and you have also got a lot more experience so I hope that by the time I have as much as experience as you have, I am similarly less in my own way. I look forward to that.

Jeremy Reeves: You know what, I have realized over the course of career that and even now, I am starting to put a lot of focus not just on you know, because I would say up until I do not know maybe a year ago or so, it was like basically everything that I listened to was skill based you know, improving myself as a copywriter, as a marketer, as strategist, that kind of thing, and I have realized that if you do not have, like if you do not improve yourself, you know, your mindset, your beliefs that kind of thing. It is kind of like that is -- I think at most people is the weak link you know what I mean, because you can be the best whatever copywriter in the world, but if you do not -- if you do not have like the internal mindset to know that and to have the confidence and to have the beliefs that you like are worth what you charge, you are still not going to do that you know versus there are a lot of people I mean are charging way more than they should not be charging and it is because they have like kind of the mindset thing on, but not the skill thing you know.

So I think it is really important for people to have like do that personal development stuff and it really just integrate those beliefs of that you know, of that awesomeness if you will you know, that they are capable of accomplishing so much more than they think you know, because it makes you think differently.

I have had several breakthroughs of my career when it was just -- things just opened up and it was like, oh my God I can do this, you know and then you go and do it and if you never had that breakthrough like if you did not allow your mind to open like that, you would never even think that idea, that idea like literally would not enter your mind you know what I mean.

So I have been spending a lot of time in personal development lately you know. Even just, I mean health wise, mentally wise, you know emotional like all that spiritually all that kind of stuff. I think it is a really big you know area of improvement that most people can make.

Nate Smith: Yeah, that is super deep, and I agree like, I think one thing I have really pick up on working with Taylor is that, it all comes back to that. It is sort of the single most important meta skill, like you can have everything else lined up, but if the mindset stuff is not in place, you can end up spinning your wheels, as you said, you can end up charging too much for too little value or you can end up charging too little for too much value and get bitter and burned out, so super important.

Jeremy Reeves: Yeah and what was your quote is, I am going to write it down. I really like that. I am going to have -- I may have to use that.

Nate Smith: I am pretty sure I stole it from somebody else too, but what am I assuming is impossible just because it has not succeeded yet.

Jeremy Reeves: I like that. I am going to write that down.

Nate Smith: I have got 1 more, do you want that too?

Jeremy Reeves: Yeah, might as well.

Nate Smith: Okay, what am I assuming is just going to happen without my taking action to make it happen.

Jeremy Reeves: Nice.

Nate Smith: And that is important for me with the clients in the pipeline and I am like, yeah, that was a great (inaudible 46:57.2) so then, subconsciously, I start to assume that the money is clear to my account (inaudible 47:02.5) but nope (inaudible 47:03.9).

Jeremy Reeves: Yeah, it is -- I have definitely learned on that one. It is not cleared until not only do you have the check but the check is actually cleared at the bank. It is fun -- I have actually gone into the point where I had one client and the check went through, it was just a small mistake. There was an awesome client, but they actually sent a check, so not only do they say they are going to send the check, but then they sent the check, but they forgot to sign it so I could not cash in. so I had it like, you know, so it was just funny though because that is one thing with a lot of service providers is they do that and it is like, oh yeah, you know, I got off the call. I think I am going to charge him you know, whatever $10k, so in your head, you are like, oh, where is that $10k on, but you have to have that and then you have to send the proposal and then they have to agree to the proposal and then they have to actually send the check and then the check has to actually clear.

So yeah, it is funny though. Yeah, that was the only time that it ever happened, but yeah, it was just a kind of funny mistake. I was actually -- I actually busted their balls for doing that, but yeah, so I mean, that was really helpful. I thought it was you know, (inaudible 48:17.6) I thought it was going to be a cool kind of story you know, that you went through because you know, you are in the beginning stages of all this you know what I mean and I you have done really, really well especially for being kind of the beginning stages and you kind of stumbled across a few things that it takes people longer I think to come across so I thought it was going to be you know, a pretty cool kind of story, inspirational I think for a lot of people listening.

Nate Smith: Man, that is super flattering to hear and it definitely means a lot to hear that you think like I am on the right track and that I stumbled across on things like definitely right that one down and remember to feel grateful for whatever things I may or may not have stumbled across.

Jeremy Reeves: Yeah, definitely, but hey, you know, before we hop off, let everyone that you know, you know if anybody wants to work with you or you know, get in the blog list and your stuff, you know, whatever you want them to, wherever you want them to go, tell everybody where they can find you.

Nate Smith: So let us do dedicated landing page, let us go to 80/20marketing guide.com/jeremy and if people come and give me their name and email, I will give them my 3 step guide to eliminating the elites in your funnel and the 3 most powerful steps that helped me 4x my profit and in 30 minutes you can kind of do the wants over on your funnel and see where you might be losing money.

Jeremy Reeves: Nice, I like it. Hey man, it was great having you on and I wish you very good luck in both the businesses you know, the information business and then also the you know, consultancy side of things and yeah, let us keep in touch.

Nate Smith: Thanks so much, great to chat with you.

Jeremy Reeves: You too.

In this episode, I discuss the importance of building a business that's focused on your CUSTOMERS wants and needs, not your own. It's a business philosophy that makes an impact on every area of your life, and a very important topic!

  Resources Mentioned

jeremyreeves.com/podcast

Want To Work With Me?

Visit http://www.JeremyReeves.com or email me at [email protected]

Enjoy!

Transcript

Hey guys what is going on, this is Jeremy Reeves here with another episode of the sales funnel mastery podcast.

You might hear a little bit of background noise today. It is a beautiful summer day here in PA. Let us see 76 degrees actually, it is kind of cool today, but my kids are playing around outside where I am recording this, so you might hear them kind of yelling and screaming outside.

One of the things I want to talk about today was how dedicated you are to your customers or your clients, right. And after going through an example or two here you are going to really know whether you are just kind of saying that you put your customers first or if you actually do that you know in reality, okay.

So kind of quick story to back this up. So I have -- one of my client is on retainer. They are on retainer for $2000 a month and I actually just emailed them the other day. I think I have been doing that since let us see, March I think, so about 4 months or so, something like that, give or take.

So I actually just emailed them a couple of days ago and I said, Hey, you know, I think it is actually time that we either remove -- so let me back this up. We are on -- basically, the retainer that we are on is $2000 a month plus and then there is a bonus structure. So it is basically for every kind of quarter of a percent there is a bonus attached to it -- increase of what they are already doing.

So I said, Hey, you know, we have been doing this for (inaudible 1:57.5) I think it has been like 4 months and things have been going a little bit slower than I was realizing that they would because we are kind of judging it based of like an average of what we thought we are going to be able to do and for the last month or so, things have been starting to slow down because they do not have quite enough traffic to be doing enough testing you know, to be needing enough copy for my feed to really be justified.

The first -- let us see, we just -- the firs test that we did took a while and that came out a little bit flat and then the next few tests were actually huge winners. I will actually kind of talk about one in a sec, but you know, the point that I am making here is that I actually emailed them and told them to stop paying me, right.

And that is what happens when you actually put your customers first or you put your clients first and you actually do your you know, you actually run your business in a way that is totally client centric, you know.

Everything revolves around the needs and desires and kind of you know, wants of the people that you are serving, right. And that is one of my core philosophies in business is to always make sure that I put the other person first because number 1 it just makes you feel better as a person. It makes you feel better as a person when you help others, right. Actually, a couple of days ago, over the weekend, I think it was, I do not know Saturday, I was outside -- I am actually redoing our kitchen right now. So I was outside cutting some tile to put them on the floor and my neighbor across the street, she is an elderly woman, very you know, she is a large woman, large elderly woman, I think she is about 80 and I saw her fall, so I ran across the street and I thankfully I was you know strong enough. I actually picked her up off the ground you know 200+ pounds of dead weight is not easy to pick up off the ground you know, it is easy to dead lift. I mean I dead lift like I do not know over 300 pounds, but when it is a person that you are picking up off the ground it is a little bit different.

So anyway, it was kind of cool, but so it makes you feel better like you know, you probably have a similar story when you help somebody else and it makes you feel good about yourself you know. I feel like that is why we are kind of here on earth is to help humanity, help other people. It kind if just you know, evolves us spiritually I think, but anyway, so I also take that into my business you know, I believe that your business and your personal life should not be separated you know.

Your philosophies that you have in your personal life should also be you know, kind of infused into your business and so one of my core philosophies in life is to help other people, to always put other people first, number 1 because it makes you feel good and number 2 because it always comes back to you in (inaudible 4:57.8) right.

You always get more like you know, there is a saying you know, if you want to get then give, right. You know, I mean, it is very true. If you want more money you know, give more to charity. If you want more love, give love. If you more health, I do not know how you can give health, I do not know if that is a good example, but you know what I mean.

So you know, I want you to think about your business you know. (inaudible 5:25.9) you know what would happen if maybe a customer came to you, just think of you know, I kind of blanking here on a specific example, but what I want you to think about is what are you doing in your business that puts your customer or your client first above your business, above your profit, above anything else and puts them in the center seat you know.

I just truly believe that that is the way that people should be running their businesses is you should always look out for your customer or client because what happens is not only are you going to impress the hell out of that person. You know, my clients, when I told them that they are like oh my God you know, I cannot believe you know requesting that we send you less money. They are actually not doing it, we actually found a worker on them and helping them with another part of their business. So you know, that is another thing actually I did not lose the money, but I gained also their respect too, but you know, think about how this kind of reflects in your business you know. What are you doing in your business. Are you reminding people that they have a guarantee you know. That is kind of an example of putting your customer first and saying, hey look, if this does not work for you, you know, I do not want you to use it, I do not want your money because it did not deliver value to you, right.

Same thing with your services, maybe you can offer a guarantee on what you do or you can offer you know, whatever it is or just keep helping them you know. That is kind of like what I do with mine. It is a little bit different when you are putting your time into it, it is kind of hard to give a guarantee because if you could spend you know, a month of your time, then you know, give all that money back, it is kind of sucks.

So what I do is I basically just keep helping people you know what I mean like I keep delivering value until I have at least made up what I charge you know. That is kind of like my minimum goal that I go for is to at very least, you know, break even. I never ever, ever, ever what a client to feel like they lost money you know. That is the worst possible case scenario in my business.

Think about what you can do in your business you know. What can you do. What resources can you give your clients or customers to help them get better results. What guarantees can you put in place. How can you restructure your product to your service so that it focuses on the customer and by the way customer and client are interchangeable here, so that focuses on your customer and getting them results rather than getting you profit okay, think about that for a minute.

I know this is hard you know, I have -- you know in my past, I have been in situations where kind of -- the only thing you think about is profit because you know, you need it, you need it to pay the bills and that kind of thing, but what you have to understand is money in this world is not created until you deliver value. So you have to put value first in whatever it is that you are doing. Whatever it is that you are selling. In every interaction that you have with your audience, you need to be delivering value first and then you get to reap rewards after you deliver the value, okay. So I want you to think about that.

You know, just look at this throughout your whole business you know, tear down your business piece by piece and say, okay, you know, in our marketing, can we deliver more value. Can we put the customer first you know, when you are writing a copy, it is all about the customer. They do not give a shit about you. They only care about themselves. Please understand that.

Good example of that, actually with this -- bring me back to the big win that I got from this client. So, just kind of prove this point. So they had upsell so they go through and there is kind of a process you know, they joined the business they go through an upsell process blah, blah.

So they have I think there is like 5 different products they can buy that they have the option to kind of upgrade their purchase, right. So they had their upsell sequence and place. We came and we look and what I did was I -- they have a salesman, so I called the salesman and I said, hey, walk me through the process you know. Walk me through what sells and what does not sell to your -- to these people that we are serving like what makes them tip, what makes them buy, right, because this is the guy that, he has direct access to the mind of the customer. He has been talking to, I mean, you know, hundreds and thousands and thousands and thousands of them. I think they do maybe 2 no, I do not know, a couple of hundred leads a month.

So he talks to a couple of hundred leads every single month and he has been doing it for years, right. So I knew that he had kind of direct access into the mind of the prospect. So I asked him basically what made them buy you know.

And so we rewrote the upsell using that kind of language. We focused on the things that made them buy which I do not know if I can go into the detail, it is just confidentially reason, I might give it away. Basically, it was fear base right. So when these people sign up, it was a corporation kind of thing. So it had to do with taxes and you know, being compliant with their corporation and you know, things like that.

So we kind of you know, put the fear (inaudible 10:55.9) essentially and said, hey look, if you do not do it this way, your you know, you can pierce the corporate veil, you can get in trouble, you can get your you know, your corporation kind of stolen away from you if the IRS audits you, they can come and just blast the hell out of you, that kind of thing and so we talked about that and it made people realized that if they did not have this certain tools that this company sells that they were putting themselves in a lot of danger and what happened was we look at the stats, it ran for about a month, we looked at the stats and the new upsells are converting 40% higher, right, and that is value per visitor. So there was -- I do not remember the exact number is on top of my head, but essentially what happened was, out of the -- I think there were 6 upsells. Out of the 6 upsells, 1 or 2 of them converted roughly the same and the other 4 one, right.

And what happened was the conversion rates were only up -- it was roughly like 15% or 20% or something like that, but the overall value per visitor was up 40%. So what happened was the products that were more expensive were the ones that we got big boost in conversions on it. So they were more expensive so it drove the average order value up. It drove the you know, the value per visitor up because they were the more expensive product, so what happened was their old copy was not explaining enough. It was not explaining you know, why they needed to spend whatever like an extra $50 or $100 or whatever it was you know, to protect themselves and my copy got into their core you know, the resident dominant resident emotions and sold them on the fact that they had to protect themselves, right.

And that is what happens when you understand your customers, right. Again, everything in your business needs to revolve around the fact that your customers are first okay, and like I was talking about before, you need to look at every single aspect of your business from your ads like I said and then in your copy, this is especially important. In your copy, the more you understand your customer, the more you are making about them, the more you are going to sell whatever it is that you sell, okay.

That is what my gift is, is I can understand people. I can get inside the minds of your prospects and I can do this very, very quickly.

I was just actually on the phone with someone about 1/2 hour ago and you know, I was talking about you know, how I have a whole bunch of meetings every single week and I have to get on the phone with people and in you know, 10 or 15 minutes. I have to full understand their entire business, right.

But you know, I think I have just a natural kind of talent for that. I can talk to somebody and understand exactly what is wrong in their business in a matter of a few minutes, a couple of questions you know, and that is just you know, I think my brain is just trained to do that, that is my you know, unique ability and it is because I am always thinking about the customers. Why is not this resonating with the customer. Why is not this you know, what is wrong with this. What is not the customer kind of going for this. What is wrong with it. Is it the price, is it the copy, the offer, is it you know, are we hitting the wrong emotions, whatever it is. Okay, so that is your copy.

Then you have to look at, okay, with your products. Are your products really geared towards getting the best result for the person you sell, right.

And you can actually come up with new product ideas when you start thinking more about your customer. What do they need. What are their frustrations you know. What are the challenges they are having in their business and it is going to help you think about new things that you can give them. So you are adding more value and you are also adding a new product.

So for example, I just came out -- we just launched, in my side business where we teach guys how to dress better. I put together this awesome badass course about how to save money when they are shopping, right, because I realized that yeah, this guys wanted to dress better, that was their frustration. They did not feel confident, they were looking to be more attractive. They did not know you know, whatever, what colors match and what accessories to go with this and that and all that and we have a product for that, but then I realized, you know, the biggest problem here you know, pretty much anybody can look good, like if you have enough money, you can look good. You just go hire somebody and say, hey, you know, make me look awesome.

So then I realized, okay, well these are young guys so what is the problem here. They do not have enough money to be able to buy the nice clothes that impress people, that make them feel good about themselves. So, I figured out and I spent a couple of weeks, a couple of months figuring out ways to save money and I came out with this really badass course about how to save $25 to $50 plus percent on everything that you save and actually it does work that way by the way. It is freaking awesome. I am so pumped that I brought it out. The feedbacks were incredible so far.

That came from thinking about my customer. Put my customer first in my mind thinking about them and thinking about how I can help them and serve them, alright, and then you know, think about every other case, not just your copy, not just your products that you have, not just the ads that you are running, but also things like how you treat your customers, your customer service, your guarantees, your refund policy or warranty whatever it is in your business.

I want you to put your customer first, okay. Yeah so that is it for today. I actually have to hop off here because I have another meeting coming up in a few minutes, but let me know what you think about this. Did you like this? You know, did I make you kind of change your thought in any way. I want you to just sit down you know, whatever your kind of way to relax is, whether -- I like to go outside and have a cigar and a glass of Bourbon and read or just sit and -- we have this really gorgeous trees you know, a view behind our house going into the woods and I like to sit and just look up the trees you know, and it helps me get into like a flow state, just relax and my mind starts -- it able to kind of just calm down and that is when the ideas come because you know, the ideas typically do not go when your mind is going 100 miles an hour. The ideas typically come when your mind is able to relax for a few minutes, alright.

So go and sit and relax and think about ways that you can serve your customers and your clients better. Do not beat yourself up if you do not have any stories like you know, the one I just told about you know, telling my client they should stop paying me you know, make that happen you know, if you do not really have anything like that and you have been kind of slacking on putting your customers first and you have been putting yourself first, then you know, right now is the time to change it you know, do not kick yourself for doing it, just start it now and change it.

Let me know how is that goes for you. Let me know if there is anything that you change in your business.

And as always, you know, if you like this podcast, if you are getting a lot out of it, I would really appreciate it if you share it with your friends and most importantly review it on itunes. All you have to do is just go to jeremyreeves.com/podcast and that all kind of bring up the things on itunes and just go and leave a review and when you do, just tell me that you left a review and I will send you, I have a freed PDF, it is 101 Conversion Tips. So it is basically, I kind of break it down by each stage of your sales funnel and it is a whole bunch of different conversion hacking tips if you will that help you improve your conversions throughout each stage of your sales funnel, and I am going to give you that free if you leave us a review. That will help us kind of grow the audience. You guys must be talking because like I said last time, or maybe the time before, the audience for the podcast has basically doubled over the last roughly 2 months or so. I have to look up at the stats again, but yeah, it has grown pretty significantly. I am going to start doing facebook ads I think.

So that is pretty exciting. So that is it. I am out for today. I will talk to you soon and again, shoot me an email, let me know if there is anything that you are going to be changing in your business as a result of thinking about your customers and putting them first, alright. I will talk to you soon, bye.

In today's episode we dig into the mind of Melinda Chen. Melinda is a MASTER of high-ticket selling... whether you're selling products, services, or anything else! We discuss how to get in front of your perfect target audience, how to make yourself stand out and get the attention of the "higher ups", and how to then close the deal! Plus she even critiques one of MY promotions I'm about to launch to get in front of high-level clients. Enjoy!

  Resources Mentioned

womenmakingbigsales.com

Want To Work With Me?

Visit http://www.JeremyReeves.com or email me at [email protected]

Enjoy!

Transcript

Jeremy Reeves: Hey everyone, this is Jeremy Reeves with another episode of the sales funnel master podcast and today I am interviewing Melinda Chen and we are going to be talking about how to kind of reach and make sales to really, really high-ticket clients and I think it is going to be a fascinating interview and you know, basically, Melinda has -- she is a founder of Women Making Big Sales so to just give you a little bit of background about her. She has 15 years of background in corporate sales, and in the past 5 years, she has actually reached 8 figures in terms of her sales track record which is unbelievably impressive. That is a lot of stuff to sell in 5 years.

Now she actually helps entrepreneurs. She specializes in helping entrepreneur’s sell and get in front of hard to reach or hard to access decision makers and to find those big you know, kind of whale clients that we all want to get in front of and not only get in front of, but actually have the you know, the authority and positioning to actually make a sale to because -- we will get in to all the reasons why we should be doing that, there are about a billion all of them which we will go through, but Melinda, how are you.

Melinda Chen: Yes, hi Jeremy, I am very good.

Jeremy Reeves: Sounds good. Sounds good. So I did a really quick you know, intro of you, just to kind of give everybody a quick little background, but tell us a little bit about your story you know, who you are, who you help, what you do, all that kind of good stuff.

Melinda Chen: Yeah. Sure. Sure. I really started selling. I go into trade show since I was age 15. I grew up in a very entrepreneurial family and my parents they have got their business. So by the time I started knowing how to speak English because I was an Asian descent, so by the time I was speaking English relatively well, my dad figured, oh perfect, she will be the perfect translator for business meetings and go into trade shows.

So he take me to trade shows and I loved it. I love the energy. I love all the creativity that came with it. So that is when I decided to keep doing -- keep staying in business and keep doing sales.

Then I graduated from the university. I got my first job as international sales manager and that was really my official sales job, selling educational products to agents around the world, Brazil, Korea, Europe, and I have really realized that wow, there is a logical (inaudible 2:29.4) about sales especially when you are dealing with people who has got a 20 years of experience in sales and I just graduated from university. So I was like, 22 like fresh meat to these sales agents, right.

And then I started really reading lots of books about sales and I did a lot of cold calls. I did about you know, throughout my whole sales career, I have done about 5,000 cold calls.

So really, just to refine those sales skills and eventually master my own art of selling and most importantly is that I really felt -- I love the challenge of getting the really hard to reach big clients and the decision makers.

So right now, I help entrepreneurs reach those client and sell to big client.

Jeremy Reeves: Awesome. Yeah, that is really cool. It is a very unique background. You get started really early. That is awesome.

So you know, what start with because you know, everybody, anybody listening to this and I also want to say, a lot of this is going to apply most of it is going to be the most relevant to anybody in the service industry, but if you are selling any kind of product, this is also very, very, very relevant.

For example, you know, I have been thinking a lot of my clients that you know, they are selling whatever, a couple $100 products, but then one of the things that I helped them with is implementing something like you know, somebody’s -- their highest sales is like just a $500.

One of the fastest ways to grow your business is putting in -- I called it a freedom offer you know, because you only have to sell a couple of them to give yourself freedom.

So I always look and say, okay, what can we -- can we take your highest priced even if it is a product or service whatever it is and 10 times it gives something you know, so if you are selling your highest price is $500 what can we sell for $5,000 you know and so if you are in that position or if you want to be in that position I also want to make sure that you are paying really close attention to this because what we are going to go over covers all that to. It is not just that you are in the service industry.

Melinda Chen: Oh yes, definitely.

Jeremy Reeves: Yeah. I want to give that a really quick kind of disclaimer just so people are not saying well I am not a service provider, so therefore, you know, this is not going to be relevant to me and even if you are selling products you should be have some kind of service anyway so you know, it should be relevant to everybody.

So the first thing I would like to start with is the advantages you know, what are the reasons in your mind for going after these you know, these big high-ticket clients versus going after you know, going after the lower quantity buy higher quality clients versus higher quantity and lower or you know, lower price but more clients.

Melinda Chen: Yeah, I like to tell people that -- I understand if a lot of people when they started out and they want to go for that, those low hanging fruit, but you should always target big clients because especially if you have a product, and there is a lot of things about I mean it depends on whether you have online product or actual physical products, but the (inaudible 5:33.9) scale is very important especially when you have physical product, you said, oh, I am just going to sell things cheap and sell a lot of quantity, but you get to work with big clients. The cost to acquire small client is actually a lot higher than cost you acquire big clients because the cost to acquire big clients takes a lot of relation building.

Yeah, it does take a lot of time to build that relationship, but they tend to be more stable. There is a lot of -- if you can shape your business the right way then you get a lot of repeat business, but if you are working with small business, a lot of times, you know, they tend to be a little bit more unstable, so depending on the clients or the business industry you are in, but you would reach a (inaudible 6:18.9) after small clients.

So how do (inaudible 6:21.7) after small client. A lot of times, either you do advertising, the marketing. So you are basically giving a lot of money to Facebook, Twitter, and linkedin. They love that. I mean social medial platform, they love this you know. They love small entrepreneurs keep doing advertising with them. (inaudible 6:40.0) the cost to acquire small client proportionally actually a lot higher than getting big clients.

So a lot of small clients I understand that or small entrepreneurs I understand that they might say, oh, I want to start off you know going after smaller clients, but you should always keep in mind that you have to go for big clients for you to actually make that significant freedom if we were talking about or profit because eventually you have to stop wasting your money on small clients, your money and time on small clients.

Jeremy Reeves: Yeah, and you know, that actually comes back -- I have been talking, actually the last couple episodes. I cannot even remember off the top of my head if they are live or not. I remember recording them. I forgot if they are live or not, but one of the things that I have been talking about recently is, how much more valuable a repeat customer is, like a higher value customer, because you know, the first time you sell a product or service, you have all that cost that goes into acquiring that you know, the client or the customer and then, but then the second time, you do not have that cost you know, so all of your marketing cost is only in that first kind of you know, the acquiring of them, but not the second time or the third time or the tenth time.

So you know, your profit margin is going way, way up as you work with them longer and I think bigger clients are much more in the position to you know, you are going to get not only bigger first time projects, but repeat projects because they have more going on you know what I mean. Would you agree with that?

Melinda Chen: Yes, definitely. I mean we can talk more about big clients and how the psychology of big clients, but definitely you know, it is the repeatable business is one huge advantage to working with big client and they tend to have very small circle of the people they work with. So most likely you can get referrals to other big clients.

So just think about your business, do you want to keep having small client and they refer you more small client or would you like to have one big client and they are happy with you and they refer you to other big clients, and you know, I tell a lot of small entrepreneurs is that if you do not do it right now, 6 months from now on or a year from now on you still be chasing after small clients. You still be working 10 hours a day trying to go after those small clients if you do not go after big clients right now.

Jeremy Reeves: Definitely, definitely. So you know, what are the things like I can hear people listening to this and say, yeah, but you know, Melinda, it is really you know, it is really scary going after these big clients, you know, I am -- maybe you know, maybe they do not have the experience or they have the experience, but they do not have the confidence you know, in themselves, in the results that they produced to go after these big clients you know, so what are -- you know, how do you overcome that like, that fear you know, to going after these big clients.

I remember you know, when I, I mean this is years and years ago, but when I first started going out to bigger clients you know myself, I remember having that kind of trepidation you know that nervousness of oh my God, what if one of them actually says yes, you know what I mean.

How do you help your clients overcome that fear of actually kind of getting started.

Melinda Chen: Yeah, well, I called it a big client muscle. I see myself a little bit like the fitness coach. What we are teaching a lot of times is, it is not necessary revolutionary, but it is like trying to get fit you know, you have a step-by-step process of how to get fit. The same thing with (inaudible 10:22.3) training is that we have a step-by-step process. So you know what to expect. You know that okay, today, we are trying to get a leads and (inaudible 10:30.5) are the few activities we are doing to get a lead and we focus on the activities themselves and also we start by doing it.

So we take baby step you know, today, yes, we understand. We are not trying to call the biggest client today and then ask for a business, but we are going to (inaudible 10:48.7) with some really influential people today and that just go by talking to them, propose your value proposition and share your ideas with them.

So slowly -- I think it is almost like when people step into a dark room, they do not know what to expect, they do not know what is in it, spiders or you know, mouse, whatever. People naturally get scared, but you know, if you turn on the light and just show people that you know, there is a step-by-step process and also you know, just take baby step, the fear to selling to big clients will naturally reduce, but I also like to share with you is that I being a corporate sales for 15 years and the reality is that I sell every single day and when I send an email to a client, before I send it like I am excited they have like he is so going to love it. This is a great offer why would he like it, but the moment I press that send, I am like, no, he is never going to write me back.

Jeremy Reeves: I have had an exact experience.

Melinda Chen: Oh, it is like you are so excited like, oh I have got great idea, he is so going to love it, but then you pressed it and there is the doubt of fear, but the reality we all have it and the difference is like I still do it, I still have that, no I said, when I (inaudible 12:08.0) to see oh, I am like, why the heck is the CEO going to reply to me, but now, I recognize it. I said, well, it is only natural. Melinda, you always have this kind of thing. You always think about it, go walk around, call your coach or call your -- the people you work with and you know that you are going to feel better 2 days from now. Just you know, let it sit and so I think that fear is only natural because it is (inaudible 12:33.6) and I am not going to sugar coat it and say listen you know, you are not going to have fear selling to big clients, the most realistic way is that you will have that fear but the difference is that you are going to now you realize that everybody has that kind of fear one way or another and it is just simply recognize it and then just let it sit and say, okay, let us wait for 2 days and let us see what happens and at the same time you know what to do in terms of the next step.

Jeremy Reeves: Yeah, and you know what, in my career with the people that know all the things that I do, I am just kind of known as someone who sees the fear, faces the fear, and then does it anyway. My mom, every time I tell her like things that I am doing that are like you know, semi-crazy, she is always like, Jer, I do not understand how you can actually get pass the fear you know, and for me, it is kind of trained because I just always done it. I am someone who you know, I just do not care, you know what I mean. I have a very thick skin I guess, but you know, but I was not always like that.

I remember starting off in my career and I mean it was nerve racking you know, it is horrible, but the more you do it and you realized, hey, things did not go so bad you know, even in the case like this, it is like you know, you are afraid of what they are going to say, how they are going to react you know, they are going to tell you that you are worthless or you know, whatever it is that you are afraid of, it never happens you know what I mean. It never does and it is just that sense of being able to feel it and do it anyway you know, and then just sit on and see what happens you know.

Melinda Chen: See what happens and then you know, I think especially when approaching big clients you need to build a relationship and then the referrals, the introduction. So basically, you need to get in the circle and the fact that you know, you have already build that preparation, you have already had the preparation and you got introduced and then it is a softer contact then you know, we are not talking about just cold calling the CEO.

So to really have you know, just slowly getting to this entourage it also ease up the fear of selling to this person because eventually you will start to feel that oh you know, I think I kind of know this person because I have done so much preparation trying to work with this person.

Jeremy Reeves: Yeah, definitely. You know what, I can tell you from personal experience that, in fact, actually this just happened today, somebody emailed me requesting to be I guess on the podcast and I can actually tell I was so impressed because she started off the conversation by, hey, I just read this value and then I read this and I love how you talked about this and this and this and I listened to a podcast, I loved how you brought up this topic and blah, blah and I could tell I mean it seemed like she (inaudible 15:35.7) 3 hours of research and I was so impressed because normally it is dear sir/madam, you know, blah, blah it is like really, you know, they get deleted instantly.

So I think a lot of is just about doing research and even if I think that overcomes a lot of anxiety that you have like when even if they can tell you are a little bit nervous when you first get in touch it is like hey you know what, they actually did the research and it almost, it almost creates like sort of like a (inaudible 16:08.1) like you almost -- if somebody you know, get in touch with you and you can tell they researched you and spent a lot of their time really putting a thought and effort into whatever it is a call or an email or direct mail, whatever you are doing, you almost feel obligated to at least give them you know, a couple of minutes to hear their you know, their elevator speech.

Do you agree with that? Do you think that is you know, kind of part of what happens is how people react to that.

Melinda Chen: Oh yeah, definitely. I agree with that 100%. The one of the best strategy that I always used is show do not tell, and show by I mean we are constantly doing this communication, a lot of people asked me so how do you show without telling. I mean when you are emailing then you automatically telling something, but this example when you mentioned about the person trying to pitch getting to your podcast is a very good example. In fact, they are showing that they are the person who would do the hard work. They would do the research. So when approaching the client, I would tell people you know, I mean, there are a lot of different ways and process, but one of really great way to talk about it is talk about their competitor. If you know the name, the decision maker of you know, obviously, you are trying to work with this person, but you (inaudible 17:22.1) in the email conversation you not casually mention the decision maker of their direct competitor then it is showing, very quickly showing that you know that you (inaudible 17:33.6) you know that inside out of the industry.

So (inaudible 17:36.4) that kind of basically doing the research, a lot of research before the call to show that you know, you have done research about this company and about this client and you understand their business priorities. That is worth a lot more than telling them oh here is my valid preposition.

Jeremy Reeves: Yeah, I love that, I love that. Actually, we are going to talk about a campaign that I am putting together right now, it is actually on my list this week to finalize. I have like 6 giant boxes of things I am going to be sending out to people. Yeah, we will talk about that in a couple of minutes, but yeah, I mean it really goes right along and actually, I actually so -- let me bring it back to an actual thing that I did, this was, maybe 4 or 5 years ago, and there was -- yeah, I think it was about 2010 or 2011 something like that, give or take.

And there was a really kind of heavy hitter in my industry that was looking for a copywriter, so my thought was, alright, this guy, I know that a lot of other copywriters are going to see this so how do I standout you know. How do I make myself so he gets my message and it is like oh my God, I have to talk to this person.

So what I did was I got to know his business. I actually made him a personal video to him, it was not like, oh I made you a personal video and then it is the same thing to everybody, it was actually like, I actually address them by name. I talked about his website and it was a video. I put it on a page and then I send him a big giant like 3 foot 2 mail and then you pull that out, a big piece sheet of paper and it was like a message on there with the URL and then he went to the you know, to URL and it was a video of me talking to him.

And that client ended up being worth, I think it was about $120,000 over 2ish year period.

And I think you know, I remember he told me he was like I was so impressed you know, you made a video for me specifically and he actually showed his entire office and he said, guys, this is the stuff we need to be doing you know what I mean.

Yeah, I agree with the you know, the more you talk about like just not sending out you know, blank you know, kind of just general messages. I mean, it is really, just a marketing principle you know. We are heading you know, in terms of personalization you know, I have so many tests that I have been doing in my clients with segmentation, personalization, and the more you can talk specifically to that person, whether it is a high value or not, the higher your sales go and I think it is especially important with you know, with these really high techie clients when you are going after you know, the really like the decision makers you know in the companies.

Melinda Chen: Yeah, yeah. I think especially the decision makers and that is why there is you know, there is, right now a lot of well going back to a lot of people talking about social selling and how you -- you know, it is going to replay selling itself. I think it presents an opportunity because there are more and more people. They are trying to automate everything but if you can really prove or you can contact these big client and using a lot of personal touch and then a lot of research, I mean we are in this age that there is so much information just right out there publicly for us to grab, you get to pick up important information and show it to this big client, it is so easy to stand out because everybody is trying to automate and everybody is just trying to just do the easy way and there are a couple of you know, so many things that we can do just simply stand out.

Jeremy Reeves: Definitely, definitely. So let us talk about how you actually get in front of clients, so you know, you did the research, maybe you actually you know, maybe I do not know, you make like a spreadsheet or something like that of the clients that you want to reach out to whatever your kind of prep work is, and then you did. You have your list of let us just say it is 100 people you want to reach out to or 50 or 10 or whatever it is, let us just say 50, just so it is a manageable number.

So you go, you do your research on all of them and then it is time to actually get in front of them. So what do you recommend. What are some of the things that you have done either yourself or your clients or whatever to actually get in front of the client. Do you -- you know, do you send cold emails. Do you just call them. Do you do direct mail, you know, what are some of the things that you guys do.

Melinda Chen: Yeah, well the first thing I like to highlight is that there are 2 different role, and today we are targeting with the entrepreneurs. I think it is very different if somebody is a sales person like a B to B sales person or you know, or just general sales person, all they have to do is sell you know, I can say, you know pick 100 names, 200 names and she was your sale target, let us call it, let us you know, use softwares, Twitter, Facebook whatever to connect with your big clients, but I think you know, with your podcast, I think we are addressing those people who are entrepreneurs and who do not have you know 7 hour a day to just sell. I mean we have other things to do you know, it is not just selling although it (inaudible 22:45.8) the most important aspect of business, but you got to do the operational side, the (inaudible 22:50.4) existing clients.

So what I would recommend the first most important thing, the absolutely most important thing for an entrepreneur or solo entrepreneur is that should be very target at in terms who you want to sell and the reality is that you cannot target a 100 big clients at one time because then there is no way that you are going to provide personal -- I mean, then it is a give and take, I mean you will be able to provide some kind of personal, but it is never really that personal kind of attention to those big clients. So that is one thing I really cautioned is that do not target 100 clients.

If you have like a list of 100 then try to narrow it down and then usually if you have that list, what we build is, we called it 2 x 5 formula. So the two, the first two is the prep work, the prep (inaudible 23:45.2) work as absolutely especially with the big clients, use your 100% of your energy to bind the introduction into this client.

So in fact, I would recommend -- personally, I would recommend the first 1 or 2 months focus on building relationship with their entourage and then also we create you know, connection map, it is like a mind map, except it is a connection map, whose connected to whom because regardless of what industry you are in I mean I have sold around the world as I mentioned before South America, North America, Asia, Europe whatever industry (inaudible 24:19.2) different industries. Once you are talking to the big, big clients they all know each other. It is a very, very small world.

So go dig into the linkedin profiles. Look to you know, first of all, obviously, the first thing is you have to make sure what target, either you are targeting you know big time speakers or you know, big buyers with certain industries then really dig into their linkedin and Twitter. See who they are connected to. Most likely is that those people they always use similar service providers.

For example, you know, if you are social manager (inaudible 24:55.4) try to find who are the big PR managers they are working with, because most likely they are working with the -- I mean you are already working with some of the big clients (inaudible 25:04.7) that everybody kind of just what you know, especially big guys, they like to keep their (inaudible 25:10.8) and they like to keep working with similar people or thing, same group of people. Big clients are extremely (inaudible 25:18.3) so what I would recommend is that build that connection or relationship map.

So just take the -- take linkedin and use any mind map or other kind of mind map on the website, there is one I loved and then start drafting this relationship map and figure out what kind of a (inaudible 25:39.4) always go to. Who do they should work with. The service provider (inaudible 25:44.8) always work with then start building relationship with the service provider first. If you want to focus on startup companies, incubators, is there any big name incubators in (inaudible 25:56.5) you know somehow you could provide value to and those are usually what I would really recommend is to connect with these people who are the (inaudible 26:06.8) of influence with people you want to target because the moment that you build trust with them then I mean this is what happened now when I went to get another client is they close on the people I know really well and interest you. I give them a call and say you know, here is what I am thinking you know, here is a few ideas I have for the upcoming project, what do you think and then we start talking about industry.

And what do you mean by talking about industry, basically, you know, we are going to share (inaudible 26:31.7) who might be interested in this, who would this project be useful to.

So this is extremely you know, extremely important thing is fill that relationship map and then start to provide you know building values.

So that is it. We are back to 2-5 formula so that you would be creating at least 2 soft contact with the decision maker and then we do the 5 official contacts and why do I -- instead of saying, oh, do we cold email this decision maker or do we send a cold call or things like that. I want you to tell people try to (inaudible 27:12.4) at least 5 different contacts. So it could be a simple I mean you know, we all know this you know, simple like on Facebook or you know providing some kind of value or maybe meet with the person in the networking or bands and things like that, but the moment you build that 5 then you know that you are -- you know, your whole sales relationship is not going to rely on one simple sales phone call.

Jeremy Reeves: Okay, got you. I love that.

Melinda Chen: You know, so keep you know, (inaudible 27:38.8) formulate that and focus on the first they know you, like you, and then trust you and then slowly build -- you know fill that before you even talk to the person and maybe I am pessimist but I say most likely the first time you contact this person he is not going to say yes to your offer no matter how great your valued proposition is or your elevator speech is.

So plan 5 different contacts so that you slowly bring the client to the final sale speech and it is a very simple way but also just simply have that plan out will ease people’s mind about selling, about you know, oh, you know, he is definitely going to say no, but you are not asking him whether he would need to (inaudible 28:24.3) have this officials sales meeting yet, you are simply saying, hey, you know, here is the quick information about me or I thought this would be interesting and that will be it.

So no pressure and once you have the process you are not going to continue focus on this one specific client, but you do this with other clients and then slowly build that relationship.

Jeremy Reeves: Nice, yeah, I love that. So as you are building, as you are providing these people value, you are getting to know them, they are not going to -- there is no resistance, there is no sales resistance because there is no sales you know at this point.

So they are starting to trust you. They are starting to kind of understand you, you know, you are familiar to them. When and I know this is kind of a generic thing because there is no like oh you know, you do it 4 days after the first or whatever, but if like in general, when is the good time to start then transitioning from okay you know, we kind of built the relationship to you know, transitioning into the you know sales mode you know so to speak.

Melinda Chen: I think when -- this happens actually this sales mode or this transitional mode, we would be planning it right at the beginning. When people are trying to figure out you know, what kind of client they wanted to focus and what their value proposition is, I always tell people it is not just the value proposition, in fact, trigger events that is a lot more important than the value proposition.

I am not saying that you are not providing value. I am hoping that you are providing a legitimate value to this client because if you are not, you know, that is never going to work from my experience. You got to be providing some real benefits to big clients, but also, the trigger events. What it means that right before at the beginning is that every industry is seasonal. So you have to plan what seasonal about the industry you are targeting.

My favorite example would be the product base companies, Christmas shopping season, it is a hectic season and even big clients there is always something late about their planning you know, either there are 2 PR. I have worked with PR companies that PR agent they were able to get big clients because they just simply target the fashion company that did not get into the Christmas shopping list on magazines.

Jeremy Reeves: Got you, okay.

Melinda Chen: So if the trigger events, what are the trigger events that really impact the industry and if you can really focus on that then when you are building (inaudible 30:57.9) like and things like that once the trigger events hit and you have already planned it ahead of time you know what are the important things, a lot of times you know, incubators you know, startup companies there is time to apply for incubating program. There is speaker, the speaker seasons. Coaches, there is always sales season. So you have to know your trigger events.

So once you build that relationship now you got your benefit and you got a trigger event, then you find the people who needs help during those hectic season who are late doing the things that you can offer then it becomes a very natural we are not even selling, you are just calling you know, and say, Hey Jeremy, I know the important day is coming up and I have not seen your information, your product on any social media what is going on.

Jeremy Reeves: Nice. Yeah, and I actually use that approach in a similar way, but slightly different way and that I am really good at taking what people already have and finding the holes in their marketing and then filling those holes.

You know, for example, one of my clients, I reached out to him and he had like a monthly you know membership program and I just reached out to him and I said, hey, his name is Mark and I said, Hey Mark, I have never seen you know, anything on your website like trying to take people from your monthly program to a yearly.

I am like you know, what would you say, what if we you know, what if I do a promotion for you and just simply taking people on your monthly you know program and offering them a yearly plan and you know, I would not charge anything and blah, blah, just be percentage of the people that upgrade you know, and it works you know, and he was like okay you know, there is no risk in it for me, you are doing all the work, I never thought of that idea and it sounds like a good idea because it was actually good timing because he need it like a patch infusion to reinvest back into his product. He is very like techie kind of thing, say he buy a whole bunch of equipment, stuff like that.

You know, and we did it and it was a huge, huge success you know, he made a ton of money. I made a ton of money and it was awesome. So it is a similar thing like it was -- it was not really a seasonal thing, but it was a like a weakness I guess you know you can call it in his business you know, but yeah, I love that you know, there really is, there is a lot of -- you know, most businesses have something like that even if you know, could be seasonal, a lot of businesses are seasonal or it could be if it is not seasonal, it could be something like that where it is more of like a weakness and you just kind of fill that gap you know.

Melinda Chen: Yeah, I love -- I mean there is nothing more than calling a client and say that and listen, do you know what your competitors are doing right now.

You know and then that is just a very simple and again you know, it (inaudible 33:53.1) it does not feel like you are selling the person, but you know, you are really trying to first of all provide the value and have this in cycle conversation and people at this point the big clients are going to figure out that you know, you are not just trying to always repeat it your value proposition and then just go through the same thing. You are really providing insightful information about the industry they are interested in and let us face it, big clients are very competitive. They love to know what happens with their competitors, so it is a great conversation breaker.

Jeremy Reeves: Yeah, definitely. So let me ask you this. Have you ever tried and this goes back to my promotion that I am about to test out probably next week I would say, because I am going to finalize it this week, but then I still to do all the research and all that stuff beforehand.

Have you ever tried anything with direct mail to reach out big clients?

Melinda Chen: Direct mail, I have never -- I mean I have done a lot of cold calls. I have done direct mails, I do not know how many (inaudible 34:57.6) out but probably in a smallest scales, I have, I would not say I have the most success with, but yeah, I have done it.

Jeremy Reeves: Yeah. So what I am doing basically is I am putting the other list a very you know, a very targeted list, I know the market really well, all that kind of stuff. I mean I could probably list off you know 30 people off on top of my head then (inaudible 35:26.1) send it out to.

I got to do like 10 weeks, but basically -- yeah, yeah you know, just kind of you know, put it into our current you know, kind of marketing plan that we are doing every week.

So what I am doing is I am doing a thing called lump email and I have this -- I came up with -- I bought these treasure chests right and they are like 5 inches long I do not roughly 3 inches high something like that, I like to have fun with Mark.

Those are all the boxes that we got by the way, I bought 100 of them and you know so they came in like --

Melinda Chen: You must have a pretty good warehouse.

Jeremy Reeves: Well, it is actually in my basement. Yeah, so there are all down there and I actually gave 1 each to each of my boys, I have 2 and a 4 year old, so they each got a treasure chest you know, and so basically, what I am doing is building a list of people in a very specific you know target audience that I have already gotten results before you know, a lot of people in that industry already know me that kind of thing and I am sending it to them. Now, my audience is going to be a little bit different than like really high like super high-end corporate you know, where there is like you know, the hierarchies like 85,000 people you know, mine are typically you know somewhere between -- yeah like between like 5 to 20 employees you know, in that range because a lot of -- you know, this industry, they do not need tons of employees to you know, to go up into like that.

You know my target is mostly in 7 figure range you know, that is kind of -- even like once you hit like $10m it starts getting a little bit too high because then they are starting to get like full-time copywriters and stuff like that.

So what I am doing is you send in the treasure chest you know, in the mail with a letter from me inside the chest and then there is a little lock on it with a key and everything and then we made this whole like story, awesome story and the value proposition are the you know, the offer is basically you know, instead of like, hey you know, call and let’s do a project. It is essentially like, Hey, you know, we are tying in the whole treasure chest thing to you know, you have revenue that is kind of buried beneath the sand and I am like you know, let us get on to quick 30-minute call, I ask you some questions and I will help find some of that revenue for you without mentioning like doing projects together anything like that.

What do you think of that approach? Do you think I am missing anything? Do you think I should add anything else and you know, it is a little bit outside of what you normally do.

Melinda Chen: Well I first of all, I do not really know your business but who are those treasure chest addressed to? Are they directly addressed to the founder or the marketing managers, the founders.

Jeremy Reeves: Yeah, the founders, yep.

Melinda Chen: And the value you are providing you basically just asking them that you know, you would like to set up a 30-minute call with them right.

Did you write any case studies or what competitive did and then what I meant is that big clients or I mean we are not talking about just corporate clients but the successful people, they are very money driven and I do not know in your letter or inside the treasure chest if you have some kind of thing to you know, you can talk about case study and just very quick you know.

Did you know that after speaking with somebody and we uncovered because the whole point is about uncovering right and convert a specific amount of missing profit.

Jeremy Reeves: Yeah, so what I am doing, I actually guarantee them that I am going to show them how to increase by a certain amount and then also the weather itself is going to be like you know, like who I am and why I am getting in touch and all that is 2 pages and then I am going to have a another 4 pages just of case studies, just 4 like straight pages of all case studies, more for just like kind of overwhelming proof you know what I mean.

Melinda Chen: I mean, obviously, they know you personally already. Are these people, they already know you?

Jeremy Reeves: Yeah, they either they know me, a lot of them have probably heard of me. Most of the clients that I worked with in this industry, when they get in touch, they have heard about me from usually one of their competitors because like you said, you know, a lot of the people in the same industry know each other, they talk to each other, they masterminds together you know, that kind of thing.

So they have either heard of me somewhere. A lot of them read the same blogs and podcast things like that and so they have heard me on air and so they have -- most of them will have if not all, will have at least some kind of recollection of me you know.

Melinda Chen: And how do you plan out that following up. Do you plan on sending a quick email or just a --

Jeremy Reeves: Yeah, and that is one question I actually did not even think of that until you were talking about linkedin before. That idea, if you heard me typing before, I was actually writing down the idea.

So that was, I kind of just (inaudible 40:54.2) as you were talking was send that out and then a couple of days after I send it follow over them on linkedin and say, hey you know, I send you package a couple of days hope you got it you know, if you have any question let me know you know, whatever.

I have not quite thought through the linkedin message yet, but yeah, probably on linkedin, a lot of the people I am probably already connected with you know, that kind of thing.

Melinda Chen: Okay, and then do you -- I am assuming that you want to make this. So this is -- you really want to have as dramatic impact as possible right for this. I mean it would not hurt that you know, for me, I mean it is already a very unique idea, but if -- because I do not know the kind of service you will be providing, but if you really want to build that kind of expectation, I would assume that you are going to send this out to the founder. If you are sending this addressing directly to the founder, it does not hurt to really start on if who else will be involved in this decision making.

Jeremy Reeves: Yeah, that is a good idea. So most of them, I would say probably 90 I mean easily 90% plus of the time, when I am talking to these clients on the phone it is the founder themselves because again you know, again, it is not my kind of sweet spot is like you know, the one the $10M range you know, but it is not like a big you know, like I just did a project for $300m company, but that was a very rare you know, project.

So most of them are somewhere the range between like $500,000 or like $10M or so you know and then yeah, so it is you know, it probably will go to the founder, there might be some exceptions to that like for example, the client that I got a couple of years ago that I mentioned earlier that ended up like the secretary got it but then she passed it to him you know what I mean.

Melinda Chen: Well, I mean, what I would do because and you still want to a lot of them I assumed that they kind of still know you and then you want to really bring forth that like I mean the trust would probably go into the case study and the letter you are writing and especially your online presence and your website, but at the same time, you want to really bring forth that like and know you kind of factor.

So it would not be a bad idea to really figure out who might being bought in this decision making. I mean, it does not mean that they will make that final decision, but for example, if they have a couple marketing people, they really work with social medial, people they work with, send a quick email, right before you send this and say by the way, I am about to send really cool stuff to so and so.

Just want to let you know it is going to be pretty cool look forward to hearing from you and you know, just get people talking to make sure that it is not going to be something that is going to be dismissed or what is even more -- I mean we can talk more after the call. If you really want to get even stronger impact is that you cannot even say that and listen, I am about to (inaudible 43:53.6) it is going to be a limited time offer because I only have not much time, but I am sending this not only to you (inaudible 43:59.4) also to the competitors.

That really boost your authority because you are really doing this something big. He wants people to start talking loud. Jeremy is -- he is launching his marketing campaign rather than just get it, okay, I mean it is a great idea, do not get me wrong. It is really much better idea than sending email, but if you really I mean, since you have already spent so much time you know, creating this marketing thing does not hurt to start. Also, send quick message or linkedin to anybody who might be working with them or to them just say, hey, listen, I will be sending you know largely my marketing campaign. I look forward to see how you -- you make it casual and say, hey, (inaudible 44:41.8) to everybody listen, everybody is going to get and feel free to laugh at me or you know make it you know, make it so that we still (inaudible 44:51.1) you build that like and trust.

I mean you have already come out with somebody who is a bit daredevil. You said you will always love to try something new. Make sure they know you and then all of the sudden that is really personal because everybody is like I do not know what Jeremy is coming up with, but he is coming with something and we will see what it is and then most likely we (inaudible 45:11.0) Facebook or linkedin response you know, have fun with it and then you can talk business.

Jeremy Reeves: Nice, yeah I like that. I like the, I think that is very good advise because it is you know, it is kind of the same thing you know, a lot of times I used things like text messaging you know for like automated text messaging.

So for example you know, one of the things we do with webinars are -- let us just say that the webinar starting at I do not know at 2:00. You can send people a text message or like 130 and then it is like, Hey, quick reminder, you know, the webinar starts in half hour and that boost response rate you know because you are kind of just getting their attention and it is a similar kind of concept with that. It is different but it is you know, it is kind of similar project. I like that. I actually --

Melinda Chen: Yeah, and then I mean mostly especially if you really have to (inaudible 46:02.4) with it, you probably get a couple (inaudible 46:05.3) of you trying to fit anyway. Did you see (inaudible 46:07.1). Hopefully, you get a couple of short messages back and say (inaudible 46:13.3) and people always love to have a little bit of humor, I hope, some (inaudible 46:18.1) and then yeah.

Jeremy Reeves: Yeah, and especially my clients, I have a lot of fun with my Mark. I mean I you know I go out drinking with a lot of them and so I really have a lot of fun with my clients and I have actually turned down clients because I did not like their personalities.

You know, --

Melinda Chen: No, I get it, I get it (inaudible 46:37.4) if you do not have the right vibe it is just never going to be a long lasting relationship.

Jeremy Reeves: Definitely, definitely. I like that and I can definitely because you know, a lot of them (inaudible 46:45.3) I am going to know their business is and that kind of thing so I can make it send them a really personal message even before they get it and then they are like what the hell is he going to send me now you know.

You know, I can even put it like if they have kids you know, something you know make sure you give it to your kids after you are done looking at (inaudible 46:59.9) or something like that.

Melinda Chen: Yeah, exactly I mean then they really build that expectation and they might be asking their receptionist for that package of, making sure that the reception does not just burn it by (inaudible 47:12.7) or something.

Jeremy Reeves: Yeah, yeah. I should put that on the package, like do not open in front of your children, something like that.

That message may be interpreted in different ways and -- but yeah so thanks for that. I hope everybody enjoyed -- I did that not only because I am curious myself to see how would you take your concepts because the way you approach is totally different and I always like we are talking about before the call, I always like to take different concepts and different ways of doing business and they kind of meld in together you know and I think that is really hopefully everybody got a lot out of that me and you just kind of going back and forth and brainstorming on that. I know I got a lot out of it.

Melinda Chen: I have a lot of fun so, I mean I am going to try this you know, treasure chest thing not on my kids but on my clients.

Jeremy Reeves: Yeah, yeah. It is a really, really good kind of fun way to get in touch, get in front of people you know, it definitely gets their attention you know what I mean.

Alright, so with that said, you know, is there anything else that I did not ask about you know, I feel like I let you down if I did not ask you a question you know, something that you want to make sure that people really understand you know before we hop off.

Melinda Chen: I think one thing is that there is -- we are back to have this process is really for entrepreneurs and I think it is important to recognize that focus -- a lot of times theory and what we could do is one thing, but really to have your daily habit and then creating the sales routine is a lot more important than how you want to approach it. I mean it is one thing to have one interesting marketing idea, but as you know, you are going to follow up and you are going to continue following up.

So I think that is a lot more important and challenging for entrepreneurs when we are managing so many things. Yeah, that is basically it and if people want to reach me, they can visit my website womenmakingbigsales.com. I do not just work with women, but I am a woman. Yeah, and they can also visit my Facebook page, Women Making Big Sales.

Jeremy Reeves: Sounds good. Yeah, and I will make sure all those links are in the show notes. So yeah, if anybody is interested in reaching out to Melinda you know, to get in touch, work with her you know, kind of you know, start a relationship, then you know, just kind of click if you are listening in your phone or whatever, just look through the show notes and they will be in there.

Yeah, that is it. Melinda, I really appreciate you coming on. It was a fantastic call. I know I learned a lot. I actually took a whole bunch of notes. If people heard me typing that is what I was doing. Yeah, I really appreciate it. I think it is a very -- it is a very important topic because it is something that anybody and you know, most people listening to this should be doing and if you are not, I mean, you are -- you know, I can tell you from personal experience you are missing out on a lot of money and also not even just you know, I know we have talked a lot about like the money aspect of this, but it is also stress to I mean -- yeah, I mean I do not know if you have this experience, but I know like in my business the more money somebody pays me, the less of the hassle they are you know what I mean, because it is you know, a lot of people and you know, it make sense because like if you are really struggling for money and you give somebody whatever it is, a couple thousand dollars, whatever it is and that is a lot of money to you then you are going to be really nervous and anxious about it and that is you know, I mean it is totally normal, but if you are you know, if you are a bigger client if you, you know, if you are doing you know, $50M in sales and then you ask that person for whatever it is, a $10,000 sale or $20,000 even that you know, the difference between what you are asking and their you know how much cash flow they have available so much bigger that they do not -- they trust you more you know and it is just you know, I have known in my business I mean the project show so much more (inaudible 51:32.3) you know what I mean.

Melinda Chen: Yeah, they did not know what they want and there is always very clear vision of how things need to be done instead of oh, I do not know, I am thinking of changing this, oh I might change this you know, I am going to -- and then suddenly decided they are not going to work continue with this project and then you have that stress out, oh no now I have to look for another client.

So you constantly chasing that to small clients and again, paying advertising money to Facebook, Twitter, and linkedin and again, they obviously still very happy about this so.

Jeremy Reeves: Yeah, you are making (inaudible 52:01.8)

Alright well hey, I really appreciate coming on. Everybody make sure that you go to womenmakingbigsales.com again that link will be in the show notes and yeah, thanks again, we will hopefully see you soon.

Melinda Chen: Thank you Jeremy. Let me know how it goes, the treasure chest, bye.

Jeremy Reeves: Yeah, I will, bye.

Today we discuss one of my FAVORITE new tools to design and build all your pages throughout your website and funnel. PLUS... how to get my copy templates (normally $197) for FREE when you decide to invest in it! We'll talk about the ease of use, how fast it is to get new pages up, plus the test I conducted on page speed which was insane. Enjoy!

  Resources Mentioned

clickfunnels

leadpages

ontraport

optimizepress

optinmonster

jeremyreeves.com/thrive

Kinowear

Thrive Themes

Thrive Ultimatum

Want To Work With Me?

Visit http://www.JeremyReeves.com or email me at [email protected]

Enjoy!

Transcript

Hey guys, Jeremy here with another episode of the sales funnel mastery podcast and today this is going to be a nice, quick, short episode. What I am actually doing is I want to talk to about actually, an affiliate product.

I know that might sound kind of weird because I never really promote affiliate stuff. That is why that should, kind of show you that this is actually really important and kind of big deal for me.

So I just found a new tool that I think everybody listening to this is going to be really excited to hear about if you are not using it yet.

It is called Thrive Themes, right. So Thrive Themes is basically a page builder. They have a whole bunch of different stuff for like -- they have -- there is Thrive Themes which (inaudible 0:59.6) pages. There is Thrive Leads which helps you know, to help you generate leads like popups, things like that. There is a content builder, that is kind of part of the page builder and then you know, you can build landing pages on there. Actually, it seems that you can put on your website like stuff for your blog and all that kind of stuff.

So the reason that I want to highly recommend this is number 1 because I just did some tests, testing it out, and the test came back ridiculously awesome.

Number 2 I am actually going to give you guys one of my products if you sign up through my link which is kind of cool and what is kind of cool is I am actually giving you -- when you look to through my link, I am going to give you my copy templates which we sell for $200, $197 technically, and the cost for Thrive Themes as of the time that I am recording this at least is $19 a month and (inaudible 2:02.2) so it is like whatever that is like $240 or whatever that is or I can say $228 technically.

I just did some good (inaudible 2:12.0) 6 o’clock in the morning without my coffee. I am only like a quarter of the way through my cup of coffee and I did that math that fast. See that.

So anyway, let me tell you a little about Thrive Themes and why I am recommending it so highly, right.

So all of us need to build pages for our funnels. We all need to build pages. It is a pretty you know, it is a pretty important kind of thing.

So I have used all kinds of -- I am typically not the one actually designing the pages. I have designers to do that. A lot of my own stuff I design because I have a pretty good eye for design and a lot of times it is kind of faster just getting it done myself than hiring out. So I will spend a night or whatever and (inaudible 2:53.6) pages together.

So I have used pretty much all of them. I have used clickfunnels. I have used you know, optinpress. I have used leadpages. I have used ontraport thing. I think it is called ontrapages you know. I have used pretty much all of them. I mean you know probably 2 or 3 more beyond that and this is by far, head and shoulders above anything else that I have used before.

For me, you know, there are a lot of different reasons that I really love this, but for me, the 2 biggest things that I kind of notice was, number 1, the speed of actually building the page. You know, I am building pages way, way faster than I did. I have used optimizepress up until this point. So I am now officially not using optimizepress. I am officially not recommending it in a big, big way, right.

So again, number 1 is speed of actually building the page. The really big thing with this is speed of the page load. So I actually -- I have had a you know, optimizepress is, it is good for building pages. Lately, I think they have gone way down hill. There is all kinds of bugs that I am finding, I do not know if anybody else is, but I am finding just tremendous amounts of bugs with them.

I actually -- I kind of have a theory that it is because it is one time price and not a yearly price because when you -- when you have a SAS business that is you know, a one time price, it does not allow you to pay developers to continually you know, add bug improvements and you know, things like that, right. So it is kind of just a theory.

Anyway, so I actually did a test. I built 2 of the exact same page every single part of it was the exact same page. I tested the page load in optimizepress and it was 11 point -- I am forgetting, it was you know, give or take a couple of milliseconds here, it was 11.5, right. So 11.5 seconds took to load that page which is really slow.

I did the exact same page in Thrive Themes I mean exact same backgrounds, exact same text, exact same literally everything, same server, same website, everything. 3.3 seconds. So let that sink in for a second. Thrive Themes was 3.3 seconds. optimizepress was 11.5. Huge difference and I have even notice the difference even when I just load the page myself, look at it or whatever, I have noticed a giant, giant, giant difference in it.

So that was my kind of big thing. So if you are using optimizepress or using any of these other things and you have been kind of thinking about switching or if you are -- if you do not have one yet, and you -- you know want to check it out, go to jeremyreeves.com/thrive and that will take you to my affiliate link and if you end up buying it, just let me know. Send me your receipt and just email your receipt and I will send you my copy templates.

So that is a $200 product. For disclosure, you know, obviously, you know getting an affiliate commission if you buy Thrive Themes that is why I am giving you a $200 product, but yeah, I will send you all of those and it is actually funny because my templates in there -- I did 1 version of like a you know, document.doc and another version in optimizepress and I am going to be switching all of those over into Thrive Themes. I am also going to be switching my entire website in the Thrive Themes.

I have actually -- for Kinowear, you guys know about Kinowear, by side business. The sales page for that I switched over. I am already seeing an increase in conversions on our main product just by you know, adding the you know, putting the design into Thrive Themes I am guessing because of the speed boost you know.

So a couple of another things about Thrive Themes that I like. If you want to go and do that now, you can. You do not really have to even listen to the rest of this. You can just hop off and go check out Thrive Themes you know by yourself and go see what they have to offer, but there is a lot of different things that comes with it, and that is why it is a little bit more expensive than other page builders and it is because it comes with a bunch of different things, right.

It is not a theme, you are getting -- it is Thrive Themes which is like the actual theme of your website, Thrive leads which is a list building plug in, so it is like you know, you guys know that I recommend optinmonster.

So I have not yet officially unrecommend optinmonster. I still love optinmonster, it is awesome. I have been talking to a client who uses Thrive Leads, they do not use optinmonster and I said like, oh well you know, does it do this, does it do this, does it do this, does it do this and she said yes to all of them. So I pretty sure it does pretty much the same things as optinmonster but it comes with it, so you do not have to buy another thing, right.

And then there is a content builder, build your pages, even you can do landing pages, optin pages, sales pages, video pages, webinars, thank you page, you know, basically all the pages that you are going to need. They have it. They have a really good selection of examples you know, templates that you can start with you know, which is bad ass. I hope they get a market place soon that should be really cool. Maybe they do, I should ask them. I do not think they do that. Yes, so it is pretty awesome and they just came out with the thing called Thrive Ultimatum which is really cool. It is basically a scarcity plugin which I am actually going to be testing out. I will be testing that out actually next week because we are doing a launch for Kinowear. I am actually going to be starting to set that up probably Thursday or Friday.

So anyway, that is you know, about Thrive Themes. A couple kind of things you know, the main thing here is the page builder which I really, really love and a couple of things about it, I am just reading this right from the sales page. Put it this way, I actually like this -- I actually like this product so much that I am thinking about building an affiliate site just for this. That is how excited I am about this product because I absolutely love it if you cannot tell and that is also why I am kind of talking about this on a podcast episode because I normally do not do that for affiliate products, but you know, I am doing this because the product is just totally bad ass.

So the number 1 thing, it is built for speed. So there is automatic image compression you know, really lean, lightweight code that kind of thing, smart conversion elements. I have not really dug into that yet. So they talk about this thing called target focus area and it shows the authors most relevant to the visitor. I have not figure that out yet, I have not dug into that yet, so I do not really know what that is, but I am going to check that out.

They -- let’s see, there is countdown timers, click to call phone numbers, I like that one by the way. The click to call, that is pretty call. Creating the pages are super, super, easy, it is just basically just go in and you have new page, you edit over Thrive Themes and you are done, you know. Super, super customizable. That is one of the things that I really like about it. There is in fact actually while I am talking, I am going to pull up one of my other pages here and I can actually kind of walk through it you know.

A whole bunch of templates you know, you can (inaudible 10:40.5) like add all the various things that you are going to need in it you know, header or navigation side bars, footer or widgets, all that kind of stuff. You can have that under or not. Fully mobile responsive which is awesome, so that is cool.

One of the really good things that I like about this is that the owner I am forgetting his name out at the top of my head. I was just talking to him to -- the owner is extremely proactive with updates and improvements and new releases and things like that.

So in the past 6 months, after opening, they released 20 major new features updates and 29 releases that have like improvements and fixes and tweaks and stuff like that and just having it, I know -- I mean the thing is being constantly updated and they are coming out with all kinds of new stuff all the time. It is really cool. You can also add things on your pages like social sharing, extra -- a lot of replaces, a couple of plugins so like social sharing like I just mentioned. You can get rid of your kind of social sharing plugins which also increases page feed. You can put in related post, optimize image galleries, fun managers. You can actually upload custom fonts into it when you build your pages which is really cool. So I am actually going to go into my thing here.

So like when you are in here, I do not know if you guys are familiar with the whole like kind of you know, click and edit type of thing, but -- so there is, you can add in paragraph text, word press context so like from your blog, image button, icons, credit card icons, custom HTML, custom CSS, a content container and that is where like you, what you can do that is really cool is you can make this content (inaudible 12:32.1) put something in it and then save it as a template, so like if you have I do not know, a call to action section, like an order form section on your page, you can save that part of the page and then reuse it in the rest of your website.

After you build your first page, you can build a bunch of these templates and then reuse them throughout your website which is awesome.

Content reveal so like if they click something it will kind of reveal the content. I have used that a lot over the years. Star rating so you know, you can just add stars like if you are coming out, if you are doing a book launch something like that.

Let us see, content templates that is the one that you save. So like I have call to action section, FAQ, headline section, the footer, bullet section, the product introduction, testimonials, and who it is for so far. Column layouts so you can add you know, all types of different columns like half and half, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 1/3 and then 2/3 on the other side you know, vice versa, all that kind of stuff. So that is cool.

Let us see, content box. So like you are at a content box, they have launch different kind of styles that you can use. Symbol boxes, same thing like icons and numbers, things like that, also share buttons, quote share. So for like, you know, Twitter if you are doing like a blog post or whatever, you can add that in there.

Dividers, testimonials, call to action, you can put them in there. Guarantee box, widgets like a custom menu you know header or something like that you put it there like 2 seconds. Pricing table which I just used. Tab content, you can do that either horizontal or vertical. Feature grid, right. So you can figure them like 2 columns and 2 rows. You can do it like feature kind of grid if you have various features in the products that you are selling.

I am going to get a quick sip of coffee here.

Content (inaudible 14:25.3) I am not even 100% sure what that is. I have not used it yet. Tables, data elements, so like a progress bar, fill counter and number counters, things like that. Google map and (inaudible 14:36.9) so if you have a local like an offline business, you can put a Google map in there which is kind of cool. Countdown timer, responsive video which I am also going to be using next week. Table of contents, I am not really sure what that would be used for, but it sounds cool. Lead generation so like if you know, if you are doing lead generation on your page, post grid, comments, and that is you know, that is pretty much. Then there is a whole bunch of other stuff you can do that I won’t really get into right now, but you know, you can really easily change the settings on your landing page, at the background image. You can make it so that it is one of those things where you scroll down and the background stays and then the like text scrolls over it. It is kind of hard to explain if you do not see it, but you can put in you know, custom scripts on your pages. Let us see, all kind of stuff with CSS. You can do change (inaudible 15:33.4) in your fonts on the page. You can upload custom fonts which I talked about before.

So basically, there is a million different things you can do and it is awesome. It is really, really easy to use which I really love because like I said, a lot of times you know, even though I write a copy I still have kind of a design sense actually from several years ago with one of my clients, this is way, way back really early in my career, but I kind of actually learned HTML and CSS a little bit and design things like that and just add someone who improves conversion you should understand design which all comes down to readability essentially you know.

So I throw together some of my own pages and then also like when I get feedback or design back from designers, I can actually edit it from my clients which is kind of cool.

Anyway, so I am not going to rumble on about this. If you want to check it out, go to jeremyreeves.com/thrive and that is going to take you to my affiliate link and to their page and if you end up buying it, just shoot me an email and I will send you my copy templates and they sell on the website for $200 so they you know, they are awesome. There are all kinds of -- there is prospect email, like there is email templates, there is webinar templates, there is landing page templates, there is sales page templates, there is you know, thank you page, I mean there is all kinds of different stuff. You can go check out what you get you know, in my products link on the website and I will give them to you for free you know.

I am actually not even making that much. I think the affiliate commission is like I do not know, maybe $100 or something like that. So I am actually losing money, but I wanted to think of something that I can give people, right, you know, for now. I am actually going to probably create some just like a couple templates and not give away the full thing, but for now, until I do that, you guys are going to get the full templates. So you are actually, oh my God, even if you just want the templates just buy Thrive Themes and you get the templates for free.

So it is an easy way to save $100 on something from me. So that is it for this week, I hope you enjoy this. Next week, we have a good episode coming up and yeah everybody you know, keep sharing this with your friends. I have noticed the podcast has essentially about doubled in the last I think about 2 months or so.

So keep sharing it with your friends the uptrend is going way, way up and that is because you know, you guys are obviously telling people about it. So make sure you keep doing that, make sure you keep putting in those reviews, remember if you do a review and you let me know that you did, I will send you my 101 Conversion Tips and yeah, there is, you know, it will take 2 seconds if you are listening to it, you obviously like it, so do me a favor please. I spend a lot of time with this podcast.

So that is it. I hope you have a good week. I hope you go check out Thrive Themes again, jeremyreeves.com/thrive and yeah, I will talk to you soon.

 

In this episode we chat with Wes Schaeffer about how he was able to build a 6-figure recurring business, from scratch! We discuss all sorts of things including how he did it, the mistakes he made along the way, how he made himself stand out from his competition, and MUCH more. Enjoy!

Resources Mentioned

theSaleswhisperer.com

Want To Work With Me?

Visit http://www.JeremyReeves.com or email me at [email protected]

Enjoy!

Transcript

Jeremy Reeves: Hey everyone this is Jeremy Reeves with another episode of the sales funnel mastery podcast and today I have on the line, Wes Schaeffer, and he is the sales whisperer.

So we actually have -- we are going to kind of talk about his story. So really quick to kind of like you know, give you like a 5 second on review. He started the company called The Sales Whisperer in 2006 and kind of started off cold calling to get his clients and then he brought you know funnels and you know marketing automation and that kind of stuff into his life which you know, everybody here is interested.

And in 2008, kind of got wrapped around with Infusionsoft and he bought the product and started using Infusionsoft and you guys know all about that and then he became a reseller of it and became their top reseller in the world, partner of the year in 2012, he wrote a book on Infusionsoft and then that led to his business kind of you know shooting off a couple different directions and then he wrote a second book. He has sales training CDs and you know, a new program that is coming out soon, and all that kind of good stuff and he did it all with inbound marketing, and working from home, he built a 6 figure recurring business you know, that kind of just goes you know.

So that is what we are going to talk about. We are going to get into his story, get into kind of the nitty-gritty of how he did everything because I know that is what everyone listening is interested in doing themselves. So we are going to get in to all the good stuff.

So Wes, how are you buddy?

Wes Schaeffer: I am good. Thanks for having me on.

Jeremy Reeves: Nice, nice. Yeah. So I found out that Wes is a very ugly man and had a pork chops tied to his neck when he was a child, so his dog will play with them.

Wes Schaeffer: (inaudible 1:50.7) all my pictures are Photoshop you know.

Jeremy Reeves: Yeah, so me and Wes had a funny little conversation before we started, but --

So Wes, you know, tell us a little bit more, go into a little bit deeper about your -- kind of how you get started in the entrepreneurial world you know, and that kind of stuff and then we will get into your business like what you are doing now and that kind of thing.

Wes Schaeffer: Well, I was in the Air Force and I got out after 9 years and just want to go into sales and I want to get paid for my production not for my time and grade, right.

And I jumped right into the world of financial services you know, being a stockbroker in the south and I mean I was just cold calling. It was just brutal, but I made sales and when you get those big commission checks it makes the brutal work be a little less brutal, but that job did not work out and that is a whole long sad story best told at a bar with a lot of alcohol and ended up bouncing around jobs. I would always succeed, but I ended up in high tech and there was a lot of turnover.

I mean one time, I was 33% over quota. One of like 3 guys in the world that made my quota and was still laid off because in telecom sector and it is just you know, in early 2000s the dot.com residual just kept grinding down.

I think at one point, after 4 years with this one company, I have been through 8 layoffs and 15 reorgs. It was just miserable and so I always had that entrepreneurial bug. I always had my fingers and things. I was trading stocks and commodities and options. I was flipping houses and rehabiting with people. I was just always have my finger and things and -- but I was still always trying to get better sales, I did not want to jump out on my own until I had a clear path. I had a wife you know, we had a couple of kids at that time and men by early 2000s, we had a 3rd kid, we had a 4th kid.

So I did not want them to suffer, right, while I was trying to find myself, but I took a sales training class. It actually was a 12 week teleconference deal and I had to pay early. I had to pay like 5 months early before the class started because they have limited seats and so that started in early 2006 and it changed my life.

And I ended up hiring that guy as a mentor, became a licensee of his content, estimated it was $10,000 and I was his first licensee, but I had access to him one-on-one and it changed my life.

So by early 2007, I was on my own doing The Sales Whisperer and building the business you know and we had 5 kids at that time you know by then and my wife has always stayed at home 21 years now, she stayed at home.

So I did not have you know a spouse’s income or benefits or any of that to cushion things, right. There was no safety net. And you know, and I made it work and you know, we get into the details, but like you said, you know, I started that in 2006. I bought a domain name at late 2006.

You know it was funny I took that sales course in early 2006, by September 1, 2006, I knew where I was going, I bought the domain name by early 2007. I had my business license. I was doing conferences and I was making money as The Sales Whisperer.

Jeremy Reeves: Nice. Yeah, I love hearing that. That is awesome.

So I have a question for you. What is your favorite type of alcohol.

Wes Schaeffer: Oh man, you know, I have evolved over the years. I was always a beer guy then we move -- we have been in Southern California for about 11 years and -- but I do not like the IPAs.

Jeremy Reeves: Oh, I love IPAs.

Wes Schaeffer: So we have been there 11 years and we live within 10 minutes of like 43 wineries and so when I was younger, I did drink a lot of wine, I like the whites but then I started really liking the reds, the big bold (inaudible 6:06.5) but I do not like those as much even more.

So last several years I really been enjoying some good bourbons and scotches and you know, I just got this Bookers, it is a Jim Beam product, it is an unfiltered, uncut, right straight from the cast and it is a very high proof and I usually drink my whiskies like 1 ice cube you know, just break it up a little bit, but this you got to put a little water in it and what happens is, it ends up with almost like a sweet after taste. It is really interesting. So I have been enjoying that.

Jeremy Reeves: Nice. Yeah, I actually like Bookers too. It is a good -- I actually had it, a couple of months ago and that was colder so sometime in the past, I do not know 6 to 8 months or so, one of our favorite restaurants that we go to was doing a -- they have beer samplers you know, like their flights you know, the one they call a paddle you know, they really give you kind of like a couple different beers. They did that for Bourbon and I saw it and the thing and I am like that is -- I know already you know exactly what I want because I am huge, huge, huge Bourbon fan.

I used to be in a scotch more but I have been switching to Bourbon last probably a year or so, but yeah, Bookers was in there so it was really, really good.

Sorry. Go back to business.

So 2006, you bought and started The Sales Whisperer and then -- take us into you know, Infusionsoft and you became one of their top resellers in the world and so you know, what were some of the things that you did to you know, to do that you know, like -- because I know Infusionsoft they are reselling programs pretty competitive you know, I always see people it is funny like you know, you see in a group and it is like, oh you know, I am thinking of using Infusionsoft and all of the sudden you have like 50 Infusionsoft resellers, oh I am going to give you this bonus, I am going to give you this bonus.

So it is pretty competitive you know. So what, you know, what kind of strategies you were using to kind of you know, break free from all that and kind of stand out?

Wes Schaeffer: It was funny you say that because just this morning, I changed my pricing and I am just going to do one price and instead of a free kick start or 699 or 1999, I just changed it to $5000 kick start because I am tired of the noise, right, but that is what I paid in 2008. They only had 1 option, it was $5000 down (inaudible 8:54.4) a month and this is before the campaign builders, this is before the new email builder, really what you are buying was automation.

Nothing was best of class except the automation and that was -- you could not live without it, really. I could not have grown without it.

And so there is a lot of noise, but the you know, the way that I grew is I became a product of the product you know and I tell people to this day I am still the dumbest certified partner out there out of 4 or 500 because all these people they get into the nitty-gritty, right.

They you know, to put it like a NASCAR terms, they are all chief mechanics, but I am the driver.

Okay, I know how to drive that beast to his limits to win and people get hung up in this API call and HTTP post and SSL certificates and that blah, blah, blah and I am like why do you need this tool. What do you need it to do. Let us make it and go do that, okay.

And so like I said, I became a part of the product, I used it. I supercharged it I did -- you know, when you start doing all this stuff right, when you start putting bells and whistles on your devices, on your vehicles, it may be cool that nitro boost is really cool until it does not work, right. Until it blows up and then it is like, oh my gosh, what cause that. And what happens too when you get all fancy like that is you scare away the typical user.

So you show them this big soup-up beast and they are like that is really cool, but you know, I just take my kids at school, I go to grocery store, I go to the gym, I drive to church on Sunday, that is all I am looking for. No, no, no, look at this thing, you know, 750 horsepower, I am like, yes nice, but so by just using the product away it was meant to, I was able to speak to the needs and the fears and the wants and the desires of the average user.

And then if they had any objections it was like, well let me show you how I address that right out of the box and I will show you when you order from me, I will show you how to do the same thing and then they are like, okay, cool. And it was just a no brainer.

And so then over time, I created more contact. I wrote a book on it, but you know what, for the longest time, I had free mastermind call. You bought Infusionsoft from me, we just did a live call, it was an open Q&A and so it kept me in front of people. It kept me top of (inaudible 11:36.7) and so -- and then the word grew and then I would simply blog about what I was doing. I made simple, simple how to videos, right. Not this 48 minutes you know, Matt Daddy videos I mean 3 or 5 or 7 minute videos on how to do this little nagging thing that has stumped you forever, okay, because people we get too caught up in our knowledge. We think that, oh, everybody knows that. When in reality -- you know, you are an expert in your field and so not everybody knows what you know, okay. Not everybody knows the stuff you even forgot you know.

So take the time to really break things down into their minute little details and so the cool thing is it gives you a lot of (inaudible 12:24.5) right it is not very onerous as well and you can bang out a 5 minute video in 5 minutes, right.

And then do not get off crazy with editing in what not, just put it up there. You know, a friend of mine still says at this day I was making a video and I think our neighbor’s lawn guy came in you know, you hear a lawn mower and I am like, hey, hold on a second, I just (inaudible 12:46.3) up my cloths, my window, and I just keep going, I just left it in, right, because I am not a videographer. I am not an editor (inaudible 12:52.4) chopped it up blah, blah, blah it is like it would slow me down from publishing that video.

You know (inaudible 12:59.0) horrendous yeah, you know I will chop it out but you know, me closing the window, great. Leave it in I mean it shows up my human being. People like it, you know, because -- so I produce content that people wanted to see and it was a content that I wanted to see. If I got stuck or a customer would ask me that over and over again or multiple prospects would ask me that, I will make a video about that. And then I grew.

Jeremy Reeves: Nice, I like it. Yeah and Infusionsoft -- I have a, I use ontraport but they are very kid of similar play you know, they do a lot of same things, but a lot of my clients have Infusionsoft, so I have seen you know, I am not really the one that goes in and monkeys around that I know you know, how to use the automation not how to actually set it up you know, I have people to do that, but that is -- you know, how should be. It is not you know, I am kind of semi-technical guy you know, I know what to make it do, I just do not know how to actually you know do it, but I work with people who do. I tell them, hey, I want to make it do this and they do it you know.

You know, Infusionsoft is a great product you know. It has got a you know with a -- the big thing that used to kind of drive a lot of people away was the complexity but with the whole -- what they called the visual builder, visual campaign builder or whatever. That is just like totally you know change the game with them. It is just so much easier now.

So how did you know once you -- you know, you built this business and you know, you work from home. You do not have employees you know, it is kind of like the dream business that most people want you know what I mean. How long did it take you to get to that point?

Wes Schaeffer: Oh man, you know, Infusionsoft -- so back in the day, they were paying at 20% commission. So in the very early days you know, you could not sell it direct or people could not pay that set up to me. They had to buy it from Infusionsoft then I got a commission on the upfront and then I got a residual commission.

So you know, back then, 20% of a $300 a month actually or $60 a month, okay. So, you know, if you do the math, if you sell 100 of those, then you are going to make $6000 a month, okay. If you sell 200 of those, you are going to make $12,000 a month.

Now that is assuming they pay $300, that assumes everybody stays, right, like no term you know, and obviously there is term and obviously there is a $200 version and they will run sales and you can get it for $250 and blah, blah, blah.

So it took me you know a couple of years of steady selling to not only build up the upfront, so eventually, they change the model. They waive the $5000 fee, they did it for free for a little while and so we sold a bunch, but then people would quit because it was too hard to use before the campaign builder because they got no training you know, they were just like, hey here is the keys you know, to a 747 go get them tiger, you know. And it is like, no. So they get frustrated and quit.

So then they came out with a $1500 kick start and a $2000 kick start and then kind of came back to the $1500 range and I am pretty much been there now for 5 years I guess.

And so that gave us money to provide good training and so -- and then but because they changed it, then I kept the upfront. So for quite a while, I did everything. I would make the sale, I would do the onboarding, okay, and then I brought on somebody to help do some of the onboarding, but you know, if I am selling let say, 5 accounts a month, and I am charging $1500, well right there $7500 a month, okay, and then those 5 accounts if I am making 20% of $300, so there is $60 times 5, well there is $300 a month residual, okay.

So you can start to see the math. I mean I was easily doing you know, 5, 6, $7000 a month upfront and then building, adding accumulative so $300 a month and then it was $600 a month and then it was $900 a month and so it build up you know pretty quickly and it just staying consistent like that but it was a lot of work you know. It was a lot of hours you know creating a lot of content. I made no outbound calls. I was not doing any type of PPC. I just make a content that people were looking for and they found me, but then I know how to sell, right. I would not overdo it. I would not pressure them and because I was a product of the product, people would opt in for a free report and then my drip sequence would drip on them and warm them up and send additional resources and then ask them if they like to talk again or hey, by the way, here is something you may not consider, go check this out.

And then they were like, hey, this stuff really works and I am like, yeah, it does, you know and then the sale was just really natural and easy.

Jeremy Reeves: Nice. So where did you go -- I know you -- you know, after Infusionsoft you know, what have you been doing since then. So that would -- you know, the whole Infusionsoft thing was kind of like when things started really you know, ramping up. They started kind of take (inaudible 18:40.5) and everybody has that point.

I just did a -- I was listening to -- I forgot what it was, it was somebody’s podcast, I forgot. They were talking about Bruno Mars, the singer, you know. And they were talking about like a story and he was you know, like most successful people, you know, everybody wants this like, oh you know, they are so lucky that they are successful you know, they do not see the 20 years you know blood, sweat, and tears that went into that overnight success you know. And his is the same way and he basically like you know spent I do not know, I forgot how many years it was, but you know, a lot of years and a lot of you know heartache and all that kind of things, his family is poor growing up and blah, blah, blah and then within like a year and a half, he went from being not even known to hosting a Super Bowl you know what I mean, I mean not hosting a Super Bowl, singing at the Super Bowl, you know what I mean. And that happens a lot you know, there is always this one, thins one thing you know that kind of like, you do all this thousand different things and then there is something just clicks you know, and from there on, it is just like you hit and it starts skyrocketing even if the trajectory is a little bit different like you know Infusionsoft is where you started really kind of ramping up. But now you are doing you know, a whole bunch of other things you know.

So what have you been doing you know since Infusionsoft and you know, becoming like (inaudible 20:06.1) a year and really getting that ramp up you know, what have you done since then to kind of keep up the momentum, keep things you know, kind of keep on pacing.

Wes Schaeffer: Oh man, well you know, I did bring on some staff, they were not employees, they were full-time contractors and honestly, pretty much have brought on the last 3 years has screwed me over. It has been brutal. I literally would have an extra $200,000 in the bank if I just stayed in bed the last 2 years. I mean it is just brutal you know, people coming on and saying that they are good and not wasting money or getting distracted or just outright stealing my content and going off on their own you know, so you know, I have been trained by Wes and (inaudible 20:55.9) you know, I am just as good blah, blah, blah and so I was like well, and unfortunately, people will believe it and they do not know until after the fact you know.

And so (inaudible visit) you know, you live and you will learn, but you know, the last year and a half I have also brought on other platforms so I did get certified in ontraport and did get certified in HubSpot but I am doing my own coaching and you know, I wrote another book on sales and marketing and deliver keynote speeches and I am coming out with a brand new sales training program called, Make Every Sale, because the one thing you got to be careful off is building your mansion on rented land, okay.

So that applies with like social media marketing. I always say you got to have your own website. You got to drive traffic back to your own site but then I have too many (inaudible 21:54.7) Infusionsoft basket you know, I had too much in my income derived from a company that can and has and will continue to change the rules at any time.

So they change the contract multiple times over the last 8 years, but for the most part it has been a fit in me, but it made me realized, I am not in control of this ride you know. I am just an active participant, a vocal participant but it is not my vehicle.

So creating programs that I own you know, that make every sale program and my books and coaching programs, that is my focus now because I do have a good business that is running with the Infusionsoft in the marketing automation.

So that is kind of like rubbing my belly, right, then I got a pat in my head and build the sales training and then I got to you know, do the next thing (inaudible 22:51.0) my foot to build the keynote speaking you know.

So always you know, the worst thing you can do is get comfortable and get complacent you know, and it is a fine line you got to walk between making sure the thriving part of your business continues to thrive. So you have to give that enough attention, enough care and feeding and watering, but at the same time, you got to build that next income stream because the loneliest number really is one you know, if you have just one computer, 1 lead source, 1 income source you know, that will break, that will dry up, it just happens.

Jeremy Reeves: Yeah, and you know, I actually have a pretty bad horror story with that one too. In 2011 or 2012 I do not know something like that, a couple of years ago, I was using -- that was when everybody was before you know Facebook was a big thing and it was when Adwords was you know, the big thing, but it was also in that time and I am sure you remember this. There is like this 2-year period where everybody just got like shun from Adwords and I had my whole lead generation like kind of system you know, was through Adwords, and it was you know, that was my one and then you know, I got the email, you have been blacklisted.

You know, and I went from like getting you know being booked all the time from Adwords because I was like the only (inaudible 24:15.7) figure on how to make it work and all of the sudden it was just like goodbye, you know. What is ironic is that I got kicked off because I had too many testimonials on site. I was finding with them online. I am like actually getting people good results you know, but they would not even let me put disclaimers anything like that, but yeah, it was a big thing, but yeah, so I kind of hit that and then that is when I learned my lesson from and I think everybody goes through that too you know.

A lot of my own clients and really successful people that I talked to, they have gone through that where they put all their eggs in one basket. The basket crumbled and then you know, they have to kind of rebuild from the ground up and then, but you learned that lesson you know.

So speaking of that, you know. What are some of your other eggs you know, what is your funnel look like now for doing you know, some of the stuff whether it is you know, kind of funneling people into your Infusionsoft funnel or for your books or for your programs you know, how -- you do not have to go through everyone and like specific detail, but like in a you know, in a broad sense you know, what are you doing with the automation with Infusionsoft to automate your marketing?

Wes Schaeffer: Well, so as I continuing to use Infusionsoft, but then you know, I did -- I expanded into other platforms, so instead of just being Infusionsoft you know, so now I am Ford, Lincoln, Mercury right or I added Honda and a Nissan dealership to my Ford dealership. So I can now help people with ontraport. Help them with HubSpot and then, I still have some good consultants that work for me that will do the fulfillment.

So we will sell blocks of hours or project-based work to help people and I do not do it you know, I will help make the sale. I will make sure it is a right fit. I will come in and make sure it is staying on course and I will do some of the riding as well myself if people need it, but you know, so those are a couple of different components and obviously you know the (inaudible 26:19.8) but you are not going to get rich selling books unless you sell a Harry Potter, you know, but keynote speaking and then opening. I have had multiple different programs I have sold over the years with this (inaudible 26:32.6) every sale is going to be my signature program. It is going to be my signature umbrella, really, and under that will be different components kind of like the dummies series you know.

So the book is going to be over arching about sales and marketing, but then I am partnering with specialists in PPC, right, or social media marketing, and so we will have segments you know, book based that will dive into those specific topics.

So then I am just seen as an overall sales and marketing leader and then it will be -- hey, you know, whatever Wes is using I want to use it, right. Same way, I mean, Nike is no synonymous with golf you know, where 10 to 12 years ago or 15 years ago they were not, right, but they signed Tiger Woods, and then okay, well Tiger uses Nike, so I will use Nike.

So the more I can become a leader just in the space, then the ancillary products will become a much easier sale, because you know, I can honestly show people. Here are tools that I have used to build my business you know, if you are in a similar situation, if you can afford these different products then they will probably help you as well you know, and it will make the sale easier.

So that is the plan moving forward.

Jeremy Reeves: Nice. So in doing that and kind of building your authorities you will call it. How are you doing now? Are you doing any paid advertising which I do not think you are, but you know, and if you are not you know, what kind of platforms are you using? Is it just organic kind of just -- word of mouth, are you doing you know, article marketing you know, podcast videos, which I know you are on a podcast, but you know, tell us a little bit about like the various marketing channels you know, that you are using to kind of gain that authority in the marketplace.

Wes Schaeffer: Yeah, it is all been organic. A content driven, but I am starting to do some advertising. (inaudible 28:42.2) right now the day with my team.

And that is one thing I just -- I do not know, I (inaudible 28:48.4) I guess I was fortunate because I could, but the marketplace is getting more crowded. There are -- Infusionsoft has a lot more aggressive in their marketing and paid advertising and a lot more partners that come in.

So I have to master paid advertising and that is number one on my priority starting right now. So look for that there will be change and you will see my mug all over the place (inaudible 29:17.4) I will be (inaudible 29:19.6) your butt and following you around. To think I am everywhere.

Jeremy Reeves: You should try -- we should go back to the pork chop thing and like put a pork chop around your neck. I have a funny picture of like a dog chasing you around. That will be awesome.

Wes Schaeffer: Nothing is sacred to me, man. I will do crazy marketing. I do not care. Whatever it works.

Jeremy Reeves: Yeah, you know what, I actually just launch a campaign this morning. I do not have any results yet because you know, because it has just launched a couple of hours ago.

And the whole thing was around this concept that I came up with. From when you first get people into your funnel and like the first email you send you know, most people is very boring you know, and that kind of thing.

So I came up with this email called -- it is basically use the email to assimilate, resonate, and then shock you know. So it is assimilate, resonate, and shock email. So if you like take you know the first words, the acronym that is ARS you know.

I was going to do (inaudible 30:25.2) but I could not think of anything to like you know, make it (inaudible 30:27.9) So I am actually doing a campaign and you know, so of course, I am using that you know, in the Facebook campaigns and the clicker rates are insane.

So far it is doing like you know, it is really -- I cannot really say what sales because you know only a couple of hours old, but in terms of like just you know, the first metric which is getting clicks you know, it is way, way above anything else that I have ever done because of that like shocking you know, kind of aspect to it you know.

I am definitely going to play around more with stuff like that you know what I mean. Just have fun with it you know, like we are -- me and my team were coming up with the concept and we are throwing around different wording and things like that and I came up with that and like, nope. That is it. We are going with that and like we have a lot of fun doing it. We are laughing the whole time you know, it was really fun, and a lot of people are kind of scared to show their personality in their marketing and it is just a huge mistake because as you were saying like, I mean the marketplace is getting crowded and one of the best fastest way that you can stand out from that is by you know, showcasing your personality, assuming you are not some you know, tree log. Assuming you have some kind of personality, but yeah, I mean, that is definitely one area you know.

As you are doing Facebook advertising or whatever advertising you are doing, I would definitely test out campaigns that get like just do like two of them you know, that are like kind of normal whatever you normally see and then do one that is totally off the wall. I know that is kind of how I am approaching mine you know.

As you do that, test it out. Let me know how that goes to because it is kind of a theory I have that is just the way that marketing is shifting you know, number one to personalization which is, I mean that is not even a theory, that is enormous fact, and then number two is personality driven you know. And that is actually what my whole kind of report that I am sending people (inaudible 32:27.8) you know, but yeah anyway, I kind of stall your (inaudible 32:31.8) for a few minutes.

Wes Schaeffer: I agree, yeah. I like doing crazy stuff.

Jeremy Reeves: Yeah, you know, it is fun.

Wes Schaeffer: Well into a degree as necessary, right. You got to be you know, the thing I always cover in my training is your marketing has to be congruent right. It is got to fit, you know. If you are a high price lawyer, you know, defense attorney or something you may not be able to get (inaudible 32:59.5) but there is a guy every time -- I used to live Austin, my mom is right outside of Austin and there is a dude that is still there every time I fly in, he has got a big billboard and it is the lawyer that rocks and this dude with I think he is a white dude with dreadlocks and you are like, well that is something I do not see every day, white getting dreadlocks and B an attorney that rocks with dreadlocks and running big ads you know.

So he has got this big, big persona and so you know, when you show up at his office and the next time I go to town -- I need to go to visit him because I have told the story for years, but I bet he does not have Muzak playing and I bet he does not have plush carpets and granite everywhere. I bet it is a cool place you know. I bet he has got like a beer on tap in the office you know, but he is congruent, okay. That is his message and that is who he is going after.

So I can make crazy ads. You can make crazy ads because we are just laid back dudes that are real and so and I would rather screen out. I always talk about disqualifying prospects. I do not want to qualify, I want to disqualify.

So by putting it out there, hey, I am crazy dude. I have fun. I am human being you know, if you are just stuck up and arrogant, do not bother calling me because we are not going to get along.

So you know, kudos you for doing it and yeah and I am going to be definitely playing with things like that because that is my style and it is the only way to cut through the noise.

Jeremy Reeves: Yeah. Same thing with video too. I mean me and you were taking about this. In fact, actually, that is how the whole ugly and pork thing came up because Wes asked if this is an audio or video you know and I said it was audio and that you know, and then it kind of went into that, but I have actually been thinking about doing videos because you know, I feel like I am like, I am able to you know be transparent you know, I just kind of be myself like I do not really (inaudible 35:05.0) because I do not really give a shit you know.

A lot of my friends they are like, how do you, you know, tell somebody like I do not care you know, like you know, I can like walk around in public with you know, like a (inaudible 35:17.5) you know and like walk through you know, and it is like, people are going to think you are weird. I am like so what, who cares, I am never going to see them again you know.

So that is kind of just how I am so that is kind of like you know, changing my marketing a little bit is to showcase that more you know what I mean and video is just a good way to do that and it is a lot more fun too you know, but yeah, I mean I think that is a huge thing for everybody in this is you know, I mean I work with all kinds of people in different industries and it is not just you know like the whole expert industry like people in marketing. I mean it is like all the industries that I am looking at that is where it is shifting is you know, is transparency, trust, authority but then mixing that in with you know, having fun like personality-driven businesses you know. It is just a huge, huge shift that I am seeing because you know, I do not know why I shifted like that. I think it is because there are so many people and you know, the internet, it has made it so easy to start a business that there is so much competition that you know, that is just kind of the way things are going that you have to differentiate yourself in some way and just the way that is going out which is you know personality.

I know I am you know, following people less and less if they are kind of just the same old same old message and you know personality and you know, that kind of thing.

I find myself like if I am looking for my inbox pretty much everybody I am listening to has some type of very strong personality you know what I mean.

There is really nobody that is just kind of like, ah, you know, blah, blah, blah like you know very boring unless their message is just like totally out of this world brilliant you know, but there is very few of those, but yeah.

So I mean you know, we are coming up on time here. So you know we went through a lot of different things today. I hope everybody got a lot out of it. I always like to hear people stories and kind of what they went through to get where they are now and some of the mistakes that they learned you know, kind of have them you know, all your eggs in one basket was one of those you know, so tell us a little a bit, 2 things number 1 you know, what your plans are kind of moving forward which you are already (inaudible 37:38.4) little bit so if you want to go into a little bit more detail on that, kind of like what your kind of seeing yourself doing over the next whatever the rest of this year, the next couple of years you know, kind of what your vision is and then also you know, if there is anything that I did not ask that I should have you know, if there is anything that you really want to cover that I you know, I did not ask the question you know, go into -- go into that a little bit.

Wes Schaeffer: Yeah, you know, it is just more of the same and what we talked about just really going bigger and broader. I have (inaudible 38:08.2) from paid you know in the beginnings because I did not have to and then it became because I did not understand it, and so I have to get out of my own comfort zone and dig in.

To the large degrees well, I did so much with Infusionsoft and still to this day. We cannot run ads that say buy Infusionsoft you know, that goes against the partner in terms of agreement.

So it kind of force my hand in that regard and I did not want to do services works so I just kept doing what worked, but now, to do sales training and sell more books and get keynote speaking gigs I am just -- I am diving in, but you are going to see me on more stages you know, I just spoke a week and half ago at the Glazer Kennedy super conference. I am speaking here in a couple of weeks in Vegas. So you are going to start seeing me out a lot more you know, I stayed home on purpose you know, I have got a big family, I like being home and I have turned down a lot of things because I just -- I do not want to travel, I do not want to fight the airport, I do not want to fight the all travel, but I do have to get out there a little more to get the word out, but I will be doing more workshops and things here. I want people to come to me and where I live is very nice, it is Temecula area you know, 43 wineries. It is really beautiful and it is very poorly marketed you know.

So there is some great resort here. I mean we are an hour from San Diego an hour from Orange County, an hour from Ontario, an hour and a half from Palm Springs. So you know, the destination come out, learn, relax, go on hot air balloon rides and you know hang out with The Sales Whisperer right, that is (inaudible 39:54.8) you know, to build the aura you know, to build the brand you know, I always said when I was a corporate (inaudible 40:03.5) I told my boss I want to be the next Zig Ziglar you know and he died a couple of years ago and I truly feel like there is a void and I felt like I can help fill that and you know, so that is the long range plan.

Jeremy Reeves: Nice, I love it. Yeah and that is an awesome thing -- I do funnel days which is a very similar concept to what you are talking about and they are really fun you know, I have not done any big mastermind things yet. It is kind of on my list of things to do but yeah I mean, Temecula that area is awesome. I go out to San Diego once a year and that whole just you know, like 2 hour region you know, give or take from LA is awesome you know, North and South of it. I actually have a client that lives up in that area, but yeah, it is a very cool area. I am in Pennsylvania so I always wish that I was on California, you know, especially after our weather last week here is horrendous. We got the whole week went without any sunshine. Yeah, it was awful. I felt like I was living in Alaska. Like, oh my God, but now it is nice and bright and sunny. I am actually going to go out and go for a run I think after we get off the call here.

So yeah, so good luck with the you know, getting people out there. I know several people who have done it. I am going to do it and everybody that has done it, loves it, because you are getting paid to get people to come to you and it is a lot of fun and you know, everybody gets a lot of value out of it and yeah, so I have to recommend you, you know, add that to your list and make sure you get that on because it is an awesome you know, thing to do for your audience.

So is there anything that you feel compelled to make sure that people know before we get off the call. Any kind of big question that I missed.

Wes Schaeffer: No man, we got pretty deep you know. To everybody you know, the main thing is you just take action you know, pull one nugget out of this and go apply it to your business you know. Knowledge in education is worthless if you do not do something with it.

Jeremy Reeves: Yeah, exactly. It really is. I know way too many people who have piles and piles and piles and piles of you know courses and then you look at their business, nothing is implemented.

Hey man, it was a pleasure having you on. It was awesome to hear about your story. The last thing before we go, where would you like people to go to learn more about you, get on your list, talk to you about working with you, you know, whatever you would like people to do next. Where should they go.

Wes Schaeffer: Yeah, just visit theSaleswhisperer.com and you can find everything there. All my social media accounts, everything then plenty of different free reports so really pick what interest you, you know, whether it sales or marketing or automation. I got all types of tools and things for you to get there.

Jeremy Reeves: Sounds good. Hey it was a pleasure having you on. We will talk to you soon.

Wes Schaeffer: Alright man. Thanks Jeremy.

In this episode, we discuss the top 5 most funnels fail to convert. If you're suffering from a low (or negative) ROI, these are the places you want to look first!

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Transcript

Hey, what is going on everybody. Jeremy Reeves here with another episode of the sales funnel mastery podcast and today is Monday, May 2nd and I am really excited for this. We have a lot going on this week. We are launching a new funnel actually on Facebook. I think I told you about that in the last podcast. I am excited about that. I actually did not even really start nothing is even created yet. We are doing a PDF to a tripwire and then you know, to essentially testing that with an upsell and then if that particular market focus works, then we are going to build out a whole funnel for it.

We are kind of doing like a little mini test for it based on the you know, the test that I talked about in the last episode.

So that is going on live this week, we will see how that works, see how that does, see if we need to make any tweaks you know, that kind of thing and then we will kind of go from there, but I am excited about that.

It kind of goes right into what I am going to be talking about today and that is 5 Reasons That Funnels Fail To Convert you know.

So in the last episode, I kind of talked about our last funnel that we tested really, really quickly that have like no thought into it and it did not really work all that well. The concept that we are testing did work, but the actual funnel itself did not you know, did not give a positive ROI on it.

So it kind of give you like a glimpse into why that did not work. So I want to expand on that overall topic of why funnels fail to convert you know, because funnels have you know, the word sales funnel you know, the buzz word sales funnel has been around for I do not know a couple of years now.

I have been doing them since like 2009, 2010, something like that, but you know the word really did not yet big until I do not know maybe like roughly 2 years ago or so.

And there is a good reason for that you know, because they worked you know, it is just plain and simple, they worked, except sometimes they do not, you know, and that is when they are not done properly you know.

And there are a lot of reasons why they would not be done properly.

So today, I am going to cover 5 of them, okay.

The first one is and really, probably the biggest one, is -- actually not the biggest one, but it is one of the bigger ones is that your message to market match is off, right.

So if your message to market matches off so let me give you a quick definition of message to market match, right.

So when you are selling something, you have to have, there are 2 parts to the equation. Just like you know, if you are going out and you are trying to pick up a girl, you have to have chemistry or a guy if you are a girl. You have to have chemistry between both people for that relationship to work.

If a guy walks up to a girl and he thinks the girl is attractive and cute and sweet whatever characteristics he is going for, but the girl does not feel that same way back, that relationship is not going to work, okay, and vice versa you know, maybe that girl thinks the guy is attractive, but the guy does not think the girl is attractive, still not going to work.

For that to work, for that relationship to work, both people need to be kind of like in sync with each other. They need to both find each other’s physical and you know, whatever, emotional, mental characteristics and traits appealing you know. They have to like their personality. They have to like how they look. They have to like how they act, all that kind of thing.

And it is the same way. When you have -- if you think about that in terms of your product and then your market, you have to make them both be in sync with each other.

So you can have a product, for example, in coming up with this new funnel that we are going to do, you know, what I did was me in my place, I wrote down -- I went outside, I have a cigar and I went out on my whiteboard out in my patio outside my office here, and I wrote down all the different -- I have my whiteboard out and I draw a line down the middle and I put PDF on 1 side and then I put tripwire on the other side, and I wrote down -- I think it was about a dozen ideas for PDFs for this, you know, for this new funnel and then on the other side, I wrote about a dozen ideas for tripwire.

And then what I did was we kind of as a team went together and well me and main marketing guy, Sean, we kind of get together and we look at both sides and I came up with my top 3 of each of those. So I said, okay, you know, this PDF is going to be perfect with this tripwire you know, and did that 3 times. He did the same thing and then we narrowed it down to 1, right.

And the reason that we did that was because there were some and I wish I had it, actually here it is, let me pull up real quick.

So for example, one of the PDFs that I was thinking about doing was X number of ways to maximize revenue from your existing list, okay. So, you know, think about that, that probably sounds pretty good, you know. You have a list and you know, I was going to show you, you know, whatever 7 ways to maximize revenue from your existing list or whatever that was except if you did not have a list, right.

That audience if you think about that who is that attracting, that specific example is going to attract people who already have a list. If you do not have a list and you are kind of in the beginning stages that is not going to attract you, okay.

And in the funnel that we are doing, we are attracting people that are in the beginning stages okay. So that one may not be relevant, right.

And you know, and then some you know, tripwires, let us see, like email segmentation templates I was going to do because the one upsell that we have is templates you know, copy templates and a big part of that is email templates you know, prospect templates and segmentation templates and buyers templates and you know, promotion templates, webinar templates, all kind of stuff like that in there.

So, again, you know, email segmentation template is going to be a great tripwire for a segment of the audience, but not for a very you know, not for a beginning part of the audience and this funnel that we are going after the end game is not to get them into coaching or you know done for you which is normally what we are doing. The end game is to sell them our products, right, $500 or less.

So there, in the beginning part of the market, they are not you know, I am not going after 7-figure business owners. They do not want that kind of stuff typically. You know, they want -- you know, the 7 you know, $500,000 plus are more looking for coaching done for you, that kind of stuff, whereas, $500 or less again, typically, looking for more information because they cannot afford the other stuff because you know, the business is not big enough, alright.

So the message to market match is making sure that what you are selling matches what the market wants, okay, and you have to look at your market and understand exactly who you are selling to and then of course you know, with the whole message, that is the copywriting. That is all you know, I would not go into that. That is all obviously going to be relevant in our Facebook ads, in the landing page, in the you know, in the tripwire page, all that kind of stuff.

Second one is adding too much complexity too early. So you know, if you have not heard this before I have basically 3 stages of a sales funnel and that is the foundational stage where you are getting the foundation setup. You have your unique selling preposition, your lead magnet, your core offer, and 1 upsell and like a buyer’s sequence to keep in touch with your buyers to kind of prime them for when you get more offers later on and keep them happy, get them good result, that kind of thing.

Then you have your maximization stage, okay, and that is when you are getting in the things like segmentation and going offline and you know, testing and things like that, right.

Understanding your matrix is a huge part of the maximization stage. Basically, what you are doing is you are taking your funnel and this is where you get more complex. You are really looking at your funnel and saying where are the leaks and you plug those leaks, okay and then in the perfection stage that is when you are getting up to 7 figures plus.

That is more split testing. You already have all of the components of a sales funnel. You already have you know, it is all segmented the right way. You have all the emails in place. You have all your various pages in place. You have things like retargeting. You have things like behavioral triggers. All that stuff and then you are looking you know, you are going after perfection. So you are going after this is like the last couple(inaudible 8:56.4) where you are testing different positioning, you are testing different offers, different prizes, all that kind of stuff and this is what I do for a lot of my clients that are 7 figures plus on retainer.

You know, is doing this kind of perfection stage, alright, but the point of this is know where you are in you know, in you know what stage, you should be in you know. If you are in a general sense, I like to say up to 500,00 or so you know, again, this is all you know, it is not like -- this is not black and white nothing in the life is black and white.

So take this you know, with a little bit(inaudible )this is just like a general rule of thumb, but up to about 500,000 in sales, gross revenue, you are going to be your foundational stage.

So you are going to be one to nail your USP. What is unique about you, you know, what is different, what is valuable about your business. You want to nail that. Nail your market, your message, all that kind of stuff.

Five hundred to a million or so, you know, maybe a million and a half, you are going to really be focusing on your maximization stage okay and then after that, after a million and a half then you are going to go really focus on your profession stage because then you can you know, you can afford to hire somebody to do stuff like that you know.

So the point here is do not try to make it too complex too early. Really nail your foundation. This is something I have been learning a lot lately with a lot of my clients is we really have to focus, take a step back and really just absolutely crush the foundation you know.

I always like to say that you know, the wider the foundation as you scale your business you know, if you are looking to scale foundation is before scaling. Maximization is when you are starting to scale, so think it that way.

If you are trying to scale your business, you have to have your foundation in place because number 1, you know, the wider your foundation, the more sturdier foundation, the faster you can go upwards before it starts to get shifty you know.

If you only have a tiny little narrow foundation and you start to scale, you are only going to be able to go up you know. Think of this in terms of a house. You have a tiny little you know, a couple of feet foundation, you are not going to be able to go up very high before the house starts you know, getting all shaky and wobbly, right and falling over.

So make sure you absolutely nail your foundation first before you start worrying about crazy stuff and getting in the multiple segmentation and behavioral sequences and like all that kind of crazy stuff that you read about. In most cases, that is not necessary. You really just have to -- just nail your foundation.

The third one is failing to understand your prospects buying cycle, alright. So it is really, really, really important to have congruency and relevancy throughout your sales funnel, alright and this goes back to the message market match, right. These are fairly similar. You know, going back to my example, with my lead magnet, you know, I am picking people in a different part of the buying cycle. If I were going after 7 figure business owners, I would be talking about segmentation. I would be talking about behavioral triggers and sequences. I would be talking about you know advance copywriting, things like that because that is what is going to attract the 7 figure plus bigger business owners to get them into my you know, done for you services, alright. Our done for you is typically like roughly 500,000 plus, again, generally.

So as you can see like I am attracting different types of people, alright. You know, lead magnets for beginners you know, resources, that is a good thing for beginner because you are not trying to attract somebody 7 figure plus they already have all the resources and tools. They are not worried about that, right.

So understand where your prospects are in your buying cycle and then kind of have triggers throughout your sales funnel that take them through and get them to the next stage in the buying cycle, alright.

In the buying cycle, I will do a separate podcast on that, because that is a whole other topic, but you know, for now, just think about where, what different stages you have of prospects that are in different stages to the buying cycle and then if you are doing you know, have different -- you can have different funnels for each one or if you only have one, focus on one of them, right.

So the client that I talked about, I do not know last time or the time before, that she is a coaching client, and she basically went from doing launches like 2 to 3 times a year you know, she is getting worn out of it that kind of thing and I helped her build the funnel. I mapped it out for her. We walk through it you know, coaching, she built it, but I kind of built it with her essentially because you know, (inaudible 13:49.4) coaching and she is now making about $1300 a day right, which is whatever that is like $500k a year or whatever from this funnel and what is funny is that, that funnel is only half done because what we did was we brought people in through different lead magnets, again, attracting different people in different stages of buying cycle and then they go into a funnel.

In her case, there is basically the super beginners and then there is people slightly more advance. She is not going after about anybody really advance so it is like kind of the beginner and intermediate areas.

And we only did the beginner part of it, right. So the only part that we even did was the very beginning course that she has and so she is right now working on doing you know, the second half of it. So that is going to probably double what she is doing now and she essentially started from 0 you know and within I think it took her about 6 weeks maybe because she had some other stuff going on and she went from essentially 0 $1300 a day just putting that funnel in place because it is a bad ass funnel.

That is failing to understand your buying cycle.

The number is 4 not understanding lifetime customer value, alright.

Too many people trying to profit as much as possible on new customer acquisition, alright. It does not allow you to profit very much you know. Think about how much money it cause. Think about getting let us just say 5 times ROI on frontend acquisition or let us just say 3 times because that is probably more realistic if you are doing like a course you know, versus like coaching or something like that, right.

So you are spending $1, you are getting $3 back, alright, good you know, but what people do not understand is that is all they focus on is, oh, I am spending $1 and getting $3 back, right. Well that might happen in the first 30 days, but what would happen if your funnel was based around getting that $3 but then turning that $3 into $10 or into $20 and that is very realistic when you are talking about you know, your backend.

There are so many things that people can do to turn their buyers into repeat super fans, you know, and nobody does it. I cannot even begin to describe how many people I talked to that do not focus on their buyers and I am talking about 95% plus of people that I talked to.

Most of the people that I talked to are at least $500 or more and a lot of them are million dollars or more and they are still not focusing on the backend and they are not focusing, they do not understand what lifetime customer value is, right.

If you really get a solid backend in place, that $3 could very well be worth $20. So let me put it this way, would you be willing to spend, get to 1 to 1 ROIs, spend $3, if it is going to turn into $20 over the next you know, 3, 6, 12 months, hopefully, the answer is yes, you know.

And so I want you to think about that you know, look at track people over, I like to track one short term lifetime customer value and one long term. So short term might be okay, you get people in your funnel. What are they worth over the first 30 days, alright. And all of you have to do with this is you know, tag them whatever like, just for example if you are doing Facebook ads, you tag them as Facebook ads and then you run a report. So, it is you know, it is May 2nd now let us just pretend it is May 1st, at the end of May so you get all your people in through Facebook right and you look at those people and you say, okay, you know, you track -- let us just pretend that we track all of the April, so we track all of April, so you look and you say, okay, these people came in you know, in the month of April and then at the end of May you would look back, what are they worth throughout the month of May, right.

So they came in all throughout April you know, up until the end of May because that would be about 30 days isn’t that sound perfect, but you need (inaudible 18:05.7) how much money did those specific people, so let us just say you brought a thousand leads in throughout the month of April. How much money were those thousands leads worth in the month of May or since you know, since they came in the first 30 days, right.

You can even tag them for the first 30 days you know, and then you look, hey, you know, where is my list of first 30 days. How much are they worth for the first 30 days, you know. How much money do they generate. And that is it, that is your value per lead in the first 30 days and then you can do the same thing for a year, right.

So you tag them, you know, first year and then you look back after a year and then you say, okay, how much were they worth over a year. I mean it is very, very easy to (inaudible 18:47.2) stuff out. It is really not complicated.

And then you look, and you say, Wow, you know, that is amazing. I thought you know, I was only getting 3 to 1 times ROI, but after a year, I am getting 20 to 1 times ROI.

So what you do with that is you know, the big secret here is you can scale so much more when you are willing to spend more money to acquire a new customer.

So you might have your “budget” $3 per lead, that is your allowable cost per lead is $3 because you know they worth $3 right or whatever your numbers are.

So if you look and you say, holy God, you know, they worth $20 over the first year, right. Wouldn’t you be willing to spend you know, more than $3 to acquire something that is worth $20 you know, hopefully, the answer is yes and that is what you do, then you go out to people and you say, hey, look, you know, I am willing to give you 100% of the upfront fee, you know, say your product is $100 or whatever and now your -- you are willing to spend $50 whatever, well don’t you think that your affiliates that your joint venture partners would be much, much, much more willing to spend more or you know, to put more effort into promoting your product to service if you are willing to give them double your ROI now. Don’t you think that you can reach a broader audience base if you know, you are willing to spend $1 or whatever it was back then and now you can spend $3, or $5, or %10 you know, whatever your number is.

I mean, you know, you can -- if you think about it, you know, typically, the more specific you are with your targeting when you are doing paid ads the higher ROI you get. So imagine like a little tiny little circle that is your circle of influence or whatever you want to call it, right. Well, if you can spend more money that circle gets bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger, right. And your competitors they do not know this. They are only willing to spend $3 as well. Well now, if you know the people are worth $20, maybe you are willing to spend $10.

So if you are willing to spend 3 times as much as your competitors, who do you think is going to win, right. Think about that. I want that to be -- that is a huge, huge lesson for most people and they do not know it. They do not know the numbers. They do not know you know, how powerful that can be. That is how Jay Abraham took Icy Hot from whatever they were like $50,000 company to like it was like a $25,000,000 company in 18 months. That is the exact principle he used because he knew that -- I think his numbers are just less than (inaudible 21:40.5) the other day.

His numbers were let us see, they found out that the Ice Hot, you know, the bomb you put it is like you know, it is kind of like (inaudible 21:50.2) right now because it is sore, but they were willing to give people $3. The product sold for $3, they were giving people $3 to sell it, okay, so they were giving 100% of the profits and they went out to a whole bunch of retailers and did that but the reason that they did that was they knew that over the first year their average customers worth $25 in that first year. So they were not losing money, alright.

And they also knew that people would -- they would spend $3 on day 1 but day 15, they would buy another model, right, and they set their terms for net 30. So they, you know, they were essentially giving people 100$ upfront but they knew that their average person was going to order within that first month.

So they were actually making $6 the first month giving out $3. So they were still getting off 50% really in the first 30 days, but then they knew that over the first year, they were worth $25. So they were getting whatever that is again 8 times you know, they were giving away $1 to make $8, right.

And that is how they went from whatever it was, it was like 50 or you know, a couple of $100,000 or something like that just -- it was like barely, just a (inaudible 23:08.5) little business and he is (inaudible 23:10.2) like 25 million and again, do not quote me on the numbers there, to within like 18 months you know. That is the power of this, alright. So think about that.

The last one is, thinking that the money is in the list, right. Everybody says the money is in the list, the money is in the list, the money is in the list, no it is not, not at all. The money is in the relationship with the list, alright.

You can have a list and I know people with list of a hundred thousand, a million people, and I also know people that have a list of ten thousand and are crushing the people with a hundred thousand or a million. The reason for that is the relationship with the list, alright.

It does not matter the size of your list does not matter, alright. You can show this by if you look at your list right now, let us just say it is, I do not know, 50,000, you think you have a big list, right. You think that is impressive. Go through it and see how many inactive people you have in there, because I guarantee you it is probably around 50%. I guarantee you because I actually just did this for both of my list.

I guarantee you that roughly 50% of the people in your list have not opened a single email in the last 3 months or more.

Go back and look at that and that is just an easy way to show you that you know, you can lop off 50% and you are still getting the same amount of opens, right, but you know, in a bigger contacts, the relationship is in -- the money is the relationship. The money is within the trust that you build with your list and that is through things like you know, telling stories, you know, being personal, being transparent, being trustworthy you know, building that trust with your audience, resonating with them and the emotional triggers that are going to help them resonate with you and that is different with every audience, you know, showing them that you are the person that is going to help them solve their problem, adding value to their lives.

You know, things like that are going to help you in the relationship with your list, you know. I always tell people that people that are little bit newer to this that if your -- I just lost my train of thought. If you are going out to your list and you are sending them emails and they are not responding and you know, things like that, it is not doing what you thought it should do for the amount of people you have in your list, it is because your sending them again it comes back to message to market match, right.

You have to -- they are signing up for specific reason and you have to give them reasons to trust you because their attention is on a hundred different things. So why are they paying attention to you, alright.

You have to show them, that is actually partly what our new funnel that we are doing. That is actually what is about essentially. I forgot what the title is going to be. Essentially about you know, I actually I called the (inaudible 26:18.2) email, which, maybe I will tell you guys about that once it is done, but essentially, it is a simulate, resonate, and shocky email, right.

It is a 60% open rate email, I might as well talk about it now, 60% open rate email that is essentially what we are going to be talk about, it is a quick little report, it is only like 6 to 8 pages. I am actually going to start finishing it today, but I called it the (inaudible 26:44.3) right.

So the simulate, resonate, and shock email. So I will talk about that more you know, once it is done. Maybe I will even do a podcast on it, but yeah, you know, there is a lot of things -- if you go in my list you get basically like an (inaudible 26:59.8) email that is essentially what this you know, what this does is I bring you into my world and you instantly know who I am, what I am about, who I can help, who you know, why you should resonate with me that kind of thing and if you don’t then I will tell you to unsubscribe you know, and that is what this whole thing is about. So I will go into -- maybe I will do a separate podcast on that, but you know, the point here is that the money is not in the list. The money is in the relationship with your list.

So do not sit there and think that it is okay to email your list once a month or once every 2 weeks even, you know, once a week should be the minimum, you know, and I sometimes I am guilty to this myself, but you know, there are so many auto responders in my list that most people are getting messages more than once a week.

So even the final broadcast once a week you know, most people are getting messages at least you know, at least once a week and plus, most of my list is on my you know, listening to this podcast anyway so it is a little bit different.

But anyway, that is it, I hope you enjoy this. If you know, if any of them really resonate with you, go back and re-listen to them, all of them are extremely, extremely important. If you want your funnel to convert, they all have to really you know, if you want to take your business to the next level, that is what you have to do you know, so if you want to get a little bit more in depth with all this, the 2 kind of main ways to work with us is either through coaching or having us just build your funnel for you. Everybody kind of want things for different reasons, so if you are interested in either of those, shoot me an email or just go to jeremyreeves.com and you know contact me. You could shoot me an email at [email protected] otherwise, if you enjoy this episode, if you think you know, your friends will benefit from it then you know, make sure you are telling people about it. Make sure you leave reviews so that our itunes rankings can go up and you know, give more people value you know. I put a lot of time into this.

So I would appreciate that and also if you leave a review, I will send you the 101 Conversion Tips PDF where you know, I list out 101 different ways to increase your conversions, start your sales funnel, and that is free. I used to sell it for $77.

So any of those would be very, very appreciated.

So that is it. I hope you get a good start to your May and again, if you are interested in working with us, then just shoot us an email or go to jeremyreeves.com and fill out the form on there, alright.

I have a team meeting in about a minute, so I will talk to you soon.

In today's episode we talk to the $1.5 BILLION dollar copywriter - Clayton Makepeace. Clayton is an absolute legend in the industry and is now semi-retired, working with just one single client, yet he graciously came on the show to talk to us about how to write world-class copy that increases revenue every single time. This is a must-listen episode!

Resources Mentioned

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Visit http://www.JeremyReeves.com or email me at [email protected]

Enjoy!

Transcript

Jeremy Reeves: Hey everyone, this is Jeremy Reeves with another episode of a sales funnel mastery podcast and today I have on the line, one of the best living copywriters in the world right now, his name is Clayton Makepeace, and I will let him get into his you know, into his background and all that kind of stuff and who he has worked for, what kind of copy he writes, and all that kind of stuff, but let us just say this, he has made -- he has up to 1.5 billion dollars in sales writing copy which blows me out of the water.

So Clayton, how are you buddy.

Clayton Makepeace: I am doing good. It is good to be here.

Jeremy Reeves: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I am excited to have you.

So before we you know, we get into questions and all that kind of stuff, tell everybody a little bit you know, go into a little bit more detail about who you are, who you have worked for, some of the copy you have done and that kind of thing so they can get a good understanding of who they are listening to.

Clayton Makepeace: Sure, well, really quickly. I have been writing copy for 43 years, it is about to be 44. I started back in the 70s. I have written for the health industry as well as for financial. I started out in the financial industry and then people (inaudible 1:11.1) and said, hey, we want to start an alternative health newsletter, would you write a promo for it and I agreed reluctantly.

So we launch Health and Healing which was the world’s first alternative health newsletter. We sold 2 million subscriptions to that $29 newsletter.

Prior to that, I had taken two companies to over 100 million in sales (inaudible 1:42.4) we start from $300,000 a month in sales to $16 million a month in sales in 1 year.

Jeremy Reeves: Wow!

Clayton Makepeace: And then (inaudible 1:49.7) company from about $20 million a year in sales to $120 million and then I started freelancing again and did the Health and Healing thing for Phillips.

Then in the late 90s, I established relationship with Weiss Research and we turned safe money reported to the largest $98 investment newsletter in the world at that time and (inaudible 2:23.4) doing their acquisition program as well as their health style promotions. We just completed one selling high price investment advisory service.

The service went for $3,000 and we did 15 million dollars in 4 months on that promotion.

So it is a lot of fun, keeps you active that is for sure.

Jeremy Reeves: Yeah, definitely, definitely. So that kind of gives everybody a good background that you clearly know what you are talking about after that much you know, that experience and you know, it is a pretty impressive you know resume.

So I have a whole bunch of questions lined up for you and I could probably have you on the phone for the next like be in a week and a half straight, but we will kind of keep it within you know 45 minutes or so.

So I kind of -- I have some questions some are for copywriting you know, just salesmanship and then the other ones are for basically, I think it is going to help really anybody in the service industry you know, get clients and then also make like maximize the money that they make with clients you know, themselves and for other clients.

So let us start with something of the copy questions. So my first one is and this is you know, I know that you could probably talk about this one for an entire day, but you know, when you are researching and you are one of the big things with copywriting and you know, writing any kind of package is the big idea you know, the hook.

So what is your process for finding that you know, because there is one big one for each and another is kind of like a couple of mini ones even throughout the packages, but do you have any kind of specific process that you go through with that or do you kind of just keep like researching until it you know, until it hits you or what are your thoughts on that.

Clayton Makepeace: Well, usually the hooks come fairly quickly to me. I do not have to -- I almost never do research in order to come up with a hook.

I am looking for you know, what is a hook? What is the purpose of it? Right. Well it is something that is going to focus the mind on either the problem that the product solves or on the solution itself, right.

So if you are focusing the mind, let us say, in the financial area. You are focusing the mind on the problem well the problem might be an impending crash in the stock market. So that would be your lead. That is where you would be focusing on. You would be explaining why you know this is about to happen. How much people lost last time. How you know, bloody it is going to be this time that kind of thing and you would begin with that. That would be your hook.

If you have a product that has a really unique solution, then you might begin with that and that is basically the big promise headline.

We have -- we are working at a promotion right now where the profit potential from these investments if you win is like winning a lottery. It is like you know, even that is $10,000, walk away with 10 million dollars. I mean it is just enormous, okay.

So, on something like that, you might want to lead with the actual benefit of the product. Also, quite often we will look at the product and I will say, what is a good metaphor and we are talking about the lead you know, how to get in, how to start the conversation.

So I will say, what is the good metaphor for what this product does. One of the products I am working on right now, look at it, okay, well this product is like having a rich uncle anytime I need money I just need to call him up and he will send a check or it is like having my own personal ATM or is like having a money tree in my backyard. Anytime I need a little extra money, I just go out and just pick it off of the tree or it could be -- maybe it is like a slot machine that pays off every single time you pull the handle, right.

So I came up with a bunch of these metaphors that very quickly focus the mind on the benefit. Wow, could it really be that easy, right, and then it is just up to you to explain, yeah, it can be.

Here is how it works. Maybe it could be a story if you have one or it could be constructed or it could be (inaudible 7:05.7) from the news. Anything that your prospect is thinking about -- he has feelings about. So he is worried about it. He is curious about it. He is fearful about it. He is excited about it. So somebody is reading about the elections right now for example that is dominating the news. How are they feeling about the elections. How are they feeling about the various candidates. How can you take what he has already thinking about and insert yourself into that conversation that he is having with himself.

So those are just some of the things that I look for when I am looking for a lead.

Jeremy Reeves: Okay, nice. What if it say something like you know, because even in the -- I do a lot of work in the like in a supplements base health, the health industry and some of the products that (inaudible 7:54.9) a lot of benefits.

So one example is like turmeric you know, it does not just do one thing, it is like it helps with your brain, it helps with you know, metabolism and fatigue and all different kind of things.

How do you -- if it is something like that works not just like the one big benefit or one big problem that is kind of like mixed up you know, how do you take a look at things like that.

Clayton Makepeace: Well I have done a lot of supplement promotions as well. In fact, I have one -- we mailed 90 million pieces of. It was for (inaudible 8:27.4) for health resources.

I have to say that, basically, you stopped looking at the product and you start looking at your market you know, if a particular substance lifts your mood and also prevents heart disease which do you think you should leave it. You know, you are going to leave with a health problem that is shared by the largest number of your people and that is also intense enough to make him want to take action to alleviate it and that is why you know, typically and I know there are some promotion now where brain supplements are starting to work and anti-aging to a lesser extent, but those things have never done as well as because you are talking about things that are not screaming, crying, problems that people have right now, right.

So they have never worked as well as the prostate cure, the heart cure, the blood pressure cure, the cancer cure you know, arthritis cure you know, the things have people are dealing with every single day. So I would look for the benefit that shared by the most people and is also intense enough to cause people to want immediate relief.

Jeremy Reeves: Okay, got it. That makes a lot of sense. And so you know, speaking of you know, a lot of -- I mean really, a lot of it comes down to or almost everything comes down to understanding who you are talking to you know, so I am sure you have some kind of process for doing the research, understanding the market, understanding the product that you are selling, all that kind of stuff.

Do you have like a structure way of doing that or you kind of just start you know, dig in somewhere and then see you know, where it leads you or is it something like you do this first then second you know, how do you --

Clayton Makepeace: I do not have to worry about that too much anymore because I am focusing on the financial market and so you know, I learned decades ago who these people are and I have got a pretty good handle on that. It has not changed much over the years, but for example, when I went in to the health market for the first time it was like 1990 and I was doing my first health promotion and I say, well I do not even know who these people are you know, there bunch of -- (inaudible 10:48.7) you know, obsessed with their own health and so I did not share anything in common with those folks and so I went to the bookstore and I went to the aisle with all the books on various aspects of alternative health and I started looking at the chapter titles. The titles of the books and also the chapter titles and I figured out you know, which ones were the best sellers and so again, you know, the people I am going to be talking to are the people who made these the best sellers, right.

Then I went to the news rack and I looked at the alternative health magazine like prevention and others and all other world health magazine and I looked at the various covers that they had and you know, I knew from friends of mine that did work for (inaudible 11:48.6) had several covers for prevention magazine each time it went out and so they had years of research on what kinds of articles (inaudible 12:01.7) on the cover that sell the magazine.

Jeremy Reeves: Okay.

Clayton Makepeace: So you know, by looking at what -- again, by looking at what my prospects are reading I got some really good cues as to who they were and what would get them and then also you can go to the Standard Rate and Data Service which is (inaudible 12:23.2) 30-pound book (inaudible 12:25.9) can get it all electronically, but Standard Rate and Data Service, you can look up all the competitors of your client. You can also look up your client and you can find out what the people bought in order to get his list.

Then finally, you go to your client you say, hey look, show me what has worked in the past. Show me what has not worked in the past. Show me the most effective or successful promotion in any of your competitors are using and show me some (inaudible 12:58.1) that they put out there.”

And all of that is -- not just a cue to what is working, it is a clue to you know, who your market is and what will get their attention.

Jeremy Reeves: Okay, got you. So at this point you know, you have your -- you understand who you are talking to, you have the lead, you have the you know, the headline, the big idea all that kind of stuff so then you know, you kind of write the package.

How about the offers? That is an area that I found that a lot of people do not put enough attention on you know, and I have worked with -- I worked with I mean everybody from you know, people kind of just starting to work with the 12-figure company right now. And a lot of -- I have done a couple with like infomercial kind of products and when I worked with them, I noticed that like 80% of their thinking at least goes into exactly what the offer is going to be you know.

So when you are putting these packages together, how do you put an offer together including you know, the bonuses, the price point, even the names of the products, things like that.

Clayton Makepeace: There is a lot there. Mainly the products for example, we are not selling Campbell suits so we do not have to you know, naming strategies are very different in the retail space than they are in the directors (inaudible 14:14.3) because in the retail space, the whole idea to come up with the name that will stick in someone’s mind so the next time they are at the store maybe they will remember your product and buy it, right. Very tenuous. (inaudible 14:28.0) direct response (inaudible 14:29.1) very nervous with that kind of nebulous, tenuous connection, but that is what they are doing you know. They are just trying to get a name that will stick in your brain.

In our promotions, the name of the product quite often does not show up until 2/3 of the way through the promotion you know. We (inaudible 14:49.6) third of the promotion capturing the guys attention getting him to read. The next they are telling our story and the final (inaudible 14:57.2) presenting our solution which is a product.

So the name of the product is less important to us; however, whenever I may name a product I tried to get a benefit into the name and I try not to worry about it being too descriptive. For example, I am working on something right now, it is a service that helps you invest in small mining shares, right. A gold mining companies that are very small and the stock is cheap. They are called Junior Miners.

You know, somebody wanted to call it Junior Miner, (inaudible 15:39.0) something like that, right. Well that is descriptive, but there is no benefit there and also there is too much information. The word junior makes me think that maybe the service is not worth that much so you know, because I do not know if you are really -- if junior is modifying miners or if you know, describing a service you know, it would be quite simple to just drop it and say, Mining Millionaire you know, we are gold mining millionaire. Now you got gold because you know that your market is extremely excited about gold. Mining which is descriptive. We are not you know, we are not buying bullion we are buying money shares and millionaire which is the benefit, right.

So I tend to look at it that way for (inaudible 16:31.3). The author needs to write -- if you are a freelancer though your client has already spent hopefully hours and hours on author and comes to you with a product that is fairly well conceived and (inaudible 16:46.4) comfortable with based on their own testing and their own track record.

So that is usually good, but I always encouraged writers if you see something that you think can be improved, talk to your client about it because they love that. They feel like they are getting something extra other than just copywriting.

I just had a situation where they gave me a product per month and I said, I absolutely hate it and they said, well, we are going to do it anyway and I said, well, okay, and I just turned to one of my junior copywriters and I said good luck buddy you know, this is your project and then probably should say this, well, actually Clayton, we are hoping you would write it.

So I said okay, you know, I guess you know, if that will make you happy, I will write about it -- tell you right upfront this really sucks.

And so the first thing I did was I changed the name of the service (inaudible 17:42.4) was I changed the focus of the service and the next thing I did was I changed the offer. It was the buy 3 years kit, 5 years offer. I changed the guarantee -- basically, I did not have to promote the service that they told me to promote because I completely changed it into something that it was not (inaudible 18:01.4) to promote.

Jeremy Reeves: Nice.

Clayton Makepeace: So when you see opportunities like that, take them you know.

In terms of the author, basically you are just looking to create as much value as you can. We have a fairly standard template in the newsletter field. If you subscribe to 1 year, you will get 1 or 2 special reports and a premium. So you are connected with the subject matter at hand, and if you take 2 years, you will get 3 to 4 additional reports and the reports are given a value and so you know, the best offer you get you know, I just wrote 1 week at $700 in free gifts and discounts and so in terms of the price of those newsletters basically the industry will said the price for you because you are competing against other newsletters and so you know, you look around and you will say okay, well $29 seems to be what I am competing against. We can always have up or down from there, but that is kind of the industry standard.

With pricing for premium service products, the price is directly related to the profit potential of the advice that you are given. So if you are doing an income service where you basically promising them that you will double their yield and they will get 6% instead of 3%. You can charge $5,000 a year for that because unless they got a couple of million dollars that they are investing you are not generating that much money for them. So you know, your price is lower, but if you got option service or a warrant service that has (inaudible 19:40.7) you can demonstrate of 2%, 3%, 4000% per trade.

Now you are talking of service where you can charge a lot more money and the other variable course (inaudible 19:53.0) some of the service is we have to limit the number of people that can get in because of liquidity problems and so we you know, we will limit 500 or 1000 people, with that limit it is just (inaudible 20:08.9) to raise the price. So those are just some of the things that we look at in terms of offer.

Jeremy Reeves: Okay, yeah, got you. So how about for buyers, it is kind of another you know, another area that I see -- huge mistake that a lot of people make typically online you know, people they call themselves you know “online marketers” you know, they are all focus on getting the lead you know, getting the first customer then they kind of forget about the buyers which is obviously a giant mistake because that is where all the money is you know.

So what about buyers, you know, you write all these promotions to get people, I mean, you know, they are both first time buyers and then repeat buyer promotions, but do you have anything in place any specific examples that you can think of where it was a very structured approach like you had a package that was specifically meant just to get a first time buyer and get them in the door and then you had something that went on or hold sequence that went out to then get them you know, to kind of you know, opt in to the higher level packages.

Clayton Makepeace: You know, for some really good stuff on that you should talk to Todd Brown. I can give you his contact information.

Jeremy Reeves: Oh, yeah, (inaudible 21:18.4).

Clayton Makepeace: Okay, so Todd is really great on this but you talked about funnels and yeah we have -- if you buy a product from us, let us say you come in as a lead and your response is something on Americas 10 best (inaudible 21:36.6) right. It is a special report, so you read the report and you opted in, you come to a squeeze page so we have your email address, but you do not buy anything okay, so you come on to our (inaudible 21:50.4) well there is a 7-week funnel process that you are about to go through as a new lead on our funnel.

The first week and it is really interesting because first we assumed that you are (inaudible 22:09.0) because you like the product that you are looking at, but you just did not buy it. So we come back to you with a better offer and then we try another product along those same lines and then we will try something wildly different.

And something else wildly different. Each week is a week long campaign where we -- with a deadline because a deadline is the most powerful tool you got online to get people to act. So 1 week campaign aimed at moving you into one of these products. After 7 weeks you see that the totality of what we have available for you.

And there is a very good chance you will obey the purchase. If you come in having bought a product you will also get a funnel designed to introduce you to (inaudible 22:59.4) and introduce you to other products so we could basically cross sell you. You come in on a $29 newsletter, we can cross sell you to another $29 newsletter or we could push you all the way up to a $3,000 trading service, and it is amazing.

Some of these people come in for $29 and their next purchase is $3,000. Others come in at $29 and they will buy another $29 and another $29 for God knows how long so that is on the low end of the scale. It is a wide end of the funnel, right. The leads that come in and the first time buyers of low price product.

So funnels are the answer there and Todd is great because he automates and does all kinds of fancy stuff and he can be working with us on our stuffs too. The other thing is will you buy a high price service. It is a complete (inaudible 23:54.6) deal. If you just spent $3,000 with me I am not interested in selling you another product right now.

What I am interested to doing is making absolutely sure you do not exercise the money back guarantee because you know I sell 15 million dollars worth of products, half of those people cancel I am out 7 million dollars, 7.5 million. So you know, it is very important to me to get you to consume the service and to experience some winners and so the funnel there is not aimed at making a sale at all, but is aimed at getting you to participate to engage with the service, to consume it, and so very different kind of approach.

Jeremy Reeves: Yeah, definitely. I call that a personal coach campaign because you are kind of taking them through like you know, just getting them to use the product, get a result from it that kind of thing. I love it.

Clayton Makepeace: Exactly.

Jeremy Reeves: Alright. So how about -- I have a feeling that we have similar thoughts on this, but what are your thoughts on writers block.

Clayton Makepeace: Yeah. I do not ever have it, I used to, but over the years I have developed an approach to writing so that before I ever have to sit down and do the hard work of actual writing I have something that approximates the rough draft, but I did not have to write you know.

So I go to the process of outlining you know, I will sit down -- let us say you give me a product, right. And the first thing I need to do is read the product profile. Identify the benefits and any unique selling proposition. You know, a lot of our products will have benefits that are common with other products that hopefully some of them will also have unique benefits that no other product has so I am looking for that and then I asked myself several questions.

First question is what must my prospect believe in order for this product to become absolute mandatory for him to purchase. What must he believe in order to make this a mandatory purchase for him.

The second question (inaudible 26:13.6) identify 2 or 3 things maybe 3 or 4 things.

My next question is you know, what must I say to him or show him to make him believe those things without a shadow of doubt and that is my researcher question, right. You know, what chart do I need to show. What quote do I need from the famous person. What do I need to show him to absolutely nail down you know, that this is a mandatory purchase.

Then I got this Ryan Deiss we were on the phone the other day with my mastermind group and Ryan is a real cool guy. I love the way he thinks and he said, he likes to sit down and basically draw a word picture of his prospect before he uses the product and after he uses the product you know. Basically this is -- and you can use it just like that in your copy you know.

In fact, I did it once with the (inaudible 27:18.9) product where I showed this guy reversing his own heart disease and canceling his appointment with the heart surgeon you know.

In picture 1, he is on the bed at (inaudible 27:30.9) and in picture 2, he is out dancing (inaudible 27:33.6) or something.

So you know, you have this before and after picture. How is this product going to change your prospects life. How is it going to bring value to his life. How is it going to change him as a person.

And then finally the final question I asked is what is he worried about, frustrated about, angry over, or excited about right. What are the things in his life that have him feeling these emotions. There are typically -- what I am looking for here are topical things, news, things in the news you know, because this is how I am going to get his attention.

You know that old national anthem (inaudible 28:22.9) you know (inaudible 28:24.8) the word sex and then underneath it just said, now that I have your attention and then you know, it told you what was in the magazine. That is a very effective technique for what we are doing, not quite that blatant.

I am doing a campaign right now for example that has to do with credit spreads, right. What could be more boring than credit spreads, right.

So how did I start the engagement process. Well, I looked around and I said what is that everyone thinking about right now. What is everyone have their (inaudible 29:00.7) right now, the elections, you know. If you are republican, you hate other republicans because they vote for Cruz and you vote for Trump, you know.

If you are a democrat, you hate republicans and you hate other democrats that are supporting Hillary if you (inaudible 29:17.5) support.

So you know, everybody is up in arms over the elections and so that is all anyone is thinking about, it is all in the news.

So instead of starting my campaign talking about credit spreads, I started out by doing a survey and asking people to tell me who is going to win the election you know, who is going to win this nomination, who is going to win that nomination.

And then over time, and I said I will give you my prediction (inaudible 29:44.7) in the meantime I want (inaudible 29:46.7) from you. Like that is the conversation started that way but then later when my analyst said you know what he was predicting. His prediction was you know what, it does not matter because this thing which I named the golden red show, is credit spread is already determined that we are about to go through 4 years of hell in this country no matter who is president and so now is my transition into the product.

You know, that is how you use this topic (inaudible 30:23.7) to get their attention. Now that was a stretch usually you do not have to go through that much of a stretch but that is an example of a stretch.

So that is it, and I take those things and I create a strategy document and I create an outline for what I am going to write then I say, what is the (inaudible 30:44.3) do we need here in order to make this point and that because my research request.

And now I sit down ay my computer and I have got this completed outline with all of the facts and figures in it and it is time to start writing.

Jeremy Reeves: And you are already 80% done?

Clayton Makepeace: 80% done. You are right, you know. So now you just have to turn it into a conversation, simple, you know.

Jeremy Reeves: Nice, I love it, yeah. I actually -- I like how you kind of laid it out like what do they have to believe you know and then how do you, you know, what do you have to say to have them believe that. I love that. I am going to start using that actually. That is good.

Alright, so moving into a little bit more of the business side of all this. I have a couple of things in here for people who are on the service side of thing, but then also you know, also clients who are hiring people like us you know, so what do you see -- I am trying to figure how to say this, when you are -- actually you know what, let us start with this one. When you are working with clients and they complained about people they are hiring you know, contract or service providers, copywriters, marketers, things like that, what are some of the things that they, that kind of you know, piss them you know, that pisses them off a little bit about people they are hiring you know, taking away the results and all that kind of stuff because that is you know, you kind of get the result or you do not. But you know, in terms of like the working relationship you know, what are some of the things that you see clients not particularly enjoying about working with copywriters. Does anything come into mind.

Clayton Makepeace: Yeah. A lot of things. I am a client you know, I have gone to a point where although I write copy every day, I also hire other writers every day and I have got a staff 3 in-house writers. We also hire freelancers.

So I see it all the time. I think the first you know, the first thing is, this is not my first -- this is my first rodeo. So do not try blowing smoke at my ass you know. It is physically impossible if 3 grandmothers all die while you are in this process you know, or you know, 6 grandfathers to get hospitalized still you cannot make your deadlines. If you are struggling, if you need help ask for it. If you do not understand your assignment, if you have questions ask them you know. It is a sign of intelligence you know. It is a sign that you thought this through, you thought about it and you have some valid questions.

I am working with Eric Patel right now. Eric is a great writer. One of the top guys in health industry and every once in a while, he will work with me on a financial project. Eric is just, he is great that way you know, he is very intuitive, but there is no question he would not ask.

The other thing is you know, communicate, if you are going to blow a deadline, that is fine. You know, Gary (inaudible 33:54.9) once said to me you know, I hired him to do a project, but I asked him when I am going to expect the first draft and he says, Clayton, my man, he goes the heartbreak of a blown deadline, has quickly forgotten in the warm blow of the new control.

That is so true you know, but just do not be working on somebody else’s project and you know, we are doing -- not working on my project and putting me off. At some point, I am going to give you a kill if he did not tell you (inaudible 34:30.1) call me again.

Another mistake that probably the most -- 2 mistakes real quick and then we can move on. The first mistake in copy that I see all the time is just (inaudible 34:46.4) or a disconnect between the product or the problem that you are talking about and the solution that you are offering you know, this happens a lot in the financial field. It would happen a lot less in the health area, but in the financial field it happens a lot (inaudible 35:05.8) with some like the elections that their backend is all about something else and there is no connection whatsoever. There is no transition. There is no way that these 2 have halves of this puzzle fit together.

The other one is copywriters who will just simply make grand sweeping statements and expects the prospect to believe them you know, (inaudible 35:37.7) your prospect is not an idiot, she is your wife you know, and so you treat your prospect with respect. If you are going to make a statement as hard to believe, back it up. If you are going to make any kind of a statement that is key to them making the purchase, back it up you know, and respect their intelligence. Do not -- you know, read it critically.

One of the hardest things for copywriter to do, you are in love with your copy, you just spent a month on it (inaudible 36:11.5) The hardest thing for you to do is to read it as a critique would, as a scenic you know, read it and say, oh, bullshit every other line you know, and ask yourself how can I make this absolutely believable.

Jeremy Reeves: I actually -- sorry I cut you off. Really quick, I was listening to an interview, I think it was David Doidge, I might have that (inaudible 36:35.6).

Clayton Makepeace: We are having dinner with David tonight.

Jeremy Reeves: Yeah, so you could ask him if he said it. It was a couple of weeks ago, I think I forgot, I listened to all kinds of stuff. I think it was him though and he was talking about the amount of benefits to put in a package and he said, he was saying that sometimes you can have too many benefits because it dilutes the big promise that you are making you know, and I love that and he said a lot of people the mistake they make is saying you are going to get you know, A, B, C, D, E, F, G you know, all the way down to Z and then they do not back up each individual one with you know, with proof and he said that actually because you know, even like little -- it kinds of adds up if they do not believe a tiny a little bit it is like okay you know, I will keep going, but then if you say 10 things and you are not backing up 10 things then they are like alright, this guy is bullshit you know.

Clayton Makepeace: Absolutely. Think of the situation where you have the one main benefit that you really focus on your entire package and then in one section of a copy you say, oh by the way you know, users have also recorded the following: Bullet, bullet, bullet, bullet, right. But they are pushed way down. You do not have to believe those things in order to buy, right.

The whole reason to buy the product is that one major reason you have upfront.

Jeremy Reeves: I love it. So working with clients, I know you have always been huge on doing you know, (inaudible 38:03.7) deals, royalties, things like that you know. How do you go about structuring it with the client. I know in most of the area that you have worked with that is kind of you know, (inaudible 38:15.1) and all that. That is kind of like what they do you know, so they are used to that, but if you are going after somebody who they were not in that world like it was a new thing to them you know, how do you go about approaching them with (inaudible 38:28.8) hey, I am going to write this for you for X dollars, it will take you know whatever 8 weeks or whatever it is you know, how would you kind of position the pitch to get a royalty from it or some kind of (inaudible 38:40.3) deal you know, something beyond the one-time fee structure.

Clayton Makepeace: You know, Jay Abraham did this with the IcyHot. It is actually a little well -- it depends on the kind of (inaudible 38:55.9) you are talking about. If you go to a work for Agora they already have a royalty program all set up. They know what their use (inaudible 39:02.6) you might be able to negotiate up a little bit if you have a super hot hand, and they really want you, but pretty much, they have a standard royalty rate you are going to pay.

When you go to somebody that is not used to paying royalty or does not used to hire any copywriters, then you can do what a friend of mine did once. He just simply said, look, I am going to give you two choices in terms of how to pay for this, you could cut me a check right now for $25,000 and I write this or you can cut me a check for $5,000 now and give me 10% of revenues, if it works, right.

So you know, most of these people are not that bright frankly and they are going to say, I am sorry but it is true, they just instinctively in a knee-jerk manner will go to the lower cost today. They will go to the $5,000 you know, but I had a project once where I had 10% revenues and for 30 days work I got paid 2 million dollars.

So you know, I mean it is a -- and Jay Abraham made like 20 million on that IcyHot deal, you know. So you know, I like that idea of giving him a choice.

One time I even went so far if you you know, every once in a while maybe 5 or 6 times in a lifetime if you are lucky, you will come across this guy with a kick butt product who does not have the first clue about marketing and he knows he has got a great product and he just cannot figure out why nobody is buying it, and you can go to him and -- you only do this if you are absolutely sure, but you can go to him and say, man I tell you the truth, I would pay you to (inaudible 41:08.2) and write this, but here is what I am going to do, I am going to write a promotion and I am not going to charge you a penny, but I want 10% or ask for 20% you know of the revenues and negotiate down from there.

So you know, either give him a choice or let him pick the one that is going to end up making you the most money because it is less money out of pocket for him upfront or I mean use that -- I ended up with a 5 year client out of research publications by making that offer to Johnny Johnson back in the 70s. I said, you know, your (inaudible 41:45.2) I can really kill it, you know, and I tell you what, I am going to write a promotion for you, if you promise to mail it, test it, I will write a promotion for you and if it works, you pay me my normal upfront fee and my royalty, if it does not work, you pay me nothing and it is like a no brainer.

Jeremy Reeves: Yeah, definitely. I take it you know, if I was hiring someone and they said it to me. I think that is you know, I think you -- kind of just have to look at that as you know, what would I you know, what would be a no brainer it is almost like putting together an offer just for a product but you are doing it a service you know.

Clayton Makepeace: Exactly, and think if you are talking to somebody, you put yourself in a client’s shoes. You talk to somebody and they show that kind of confidence you are going to want to hire him.

Jeremy Reeves: Yeah, definitely. Alright, so we are kind of coming up on time here. So let us do two really quick questions. This first one might take a minute or two and then the second one is a really quick one.

So the first one is, if you look back over your career you know, it is now spanning you know, whatever it was 46 years or whatever it was, if someone was you know, kind of in the beginning stage of that or you know whatever the stage of that and you were looking back over your career and there were like 2 or 3 big things that you know, held you back that you can help somebody to kind of not hit those road blocks you know, what would they be and let me know that -- that question came out a little bit weird, let me know if that was clear.

Clayton Makepeace: Yeah, I think you are asking what would I ask if I was you know, --

Jeremy Reeves: Yeah, exactly.

Clayton Makepeace: Well, the cool thing is you know, today, there is 9 million people out there well I would not overstate it, but today you have access (inaudible 43:37.8) good copy coaches, right. So back when I was getting started (inaudible 43:43.4) was my copy coach. I was brand new, he is a little older than me. He was already established and so I heard he was a good writer and I figured out who he was writing for and I subscribed to their publications and so I started getting all his great direct mail pieces and I would run you know, run at the mail box grab at one end and get my scissors out, I start cutting them out. I had a book for headlines. I had you know, I outlined a piece so -- it was amazing how consistent his outlines were.

And I would look at the subheads, I look at every part of the author. I would memorize it. I never would steal anything but you are internalizing all of the stuff so the next time you write something is there. You get what he is doing right without doing anything verbatim.

So that was how we had to (inaudible 44:37.5) and then my buddy, Gary Halbert, came along, Dan Kennedy came along, AWAI came along and Gary Bencivenga with his Bencivenga bullets. All of these guys are there to help and so you know, you got to take advantage of this. This is like it is a gift from (inaudible 45:03.0) from heaven you know, that you got these writers who have done great things in their careers and they are willing to help you.

The questions that I would have had would have been pretty much the ones that you have asked me today. The ones about how do you connect with your market. How do you organize your promotions. How do you avoid writers (inaudible 45:29.4). How do you structure an offer you know, all of those things, and it is amazing when Mike Palmer came to visit a couple of weeks ago and we have drinks and Mike is a guy that wrote End of America for Stansberry. He sold 750,000 subscriptions after that one video sales letter and you know, just to talk to my -- and we were just sharing, well, how do you do this, how do you do that and our approaches were so different, but I learned from him and I think he may have learned a little bit you know, from me. In fact, one time, Mike called me up and said, can I just come to your office and sit in front of your desk for 2 days. I just want to -- I do not want to talk, I just want to watch you work and I said sure you know. So you know, he did that and like I said earlier, we have a dinner with David Doidge tonight, your friend (inaudible 46:31.9) to get his career started.

All of these people have slightly different approaches to how they do things (inaudible 46:39.6) will sit down and write 350 fascinations before he starts writing a copy you know, and you can learn from each of them. So you know, I guess what that boils down to his networking you know. Spent time with other writers. Go to the American Writers and Artists boot camp every year in October. You will meet 500 or 600 other writers there. Join a mastermind. I have got a mastermind group. We had a couple of group members and we all share secret Facebook page plus we have webinars every month.

So you are constantly (inaudible 47:16.0) each craft plus you can show your copy to other people, other copywriters give (inaudible 47:24.5) so you know, networking is very, very important. It is a gift that we have today and you take advantage of it.

Jeremy Reeves: Definitely. Fully agree. Absolutely. Alright, so the final question is and you can throw out as many as you want, one or twenty or you know, whatever kind of pops in your head, but what are some of your favorite copywriting or marketing books, because a lot of times you know, some of the best copywriting books are not you know actually copywriting books you know, so besides any of your own stuff obviously you know, because I have gone through them and they are just ridiculous (inaudible 47:59.1) amazing there, but you know, any kind of you know, normal books. What pops in your head as kind of must reads for people either learning copywriting or just marketing you know selling in general.

Clayton Makepeace: Well, you know, I kind of find I guess because I am an old guy you know, when I read modern day books, current day books, and copywriting, they seemed to me (inaudible 48:23.0) regurgitation of what Claude Hopkins wrote, what John Caples wrote, what David Ogilvy wrote, what (inaudible 48:33.5) wrote, what Eugene Schwartz wrote. Those are the guys -- I was speaking last year at the boot camp for AWAI and American Writers and Artist and I asked a question, how many of you have read Tested Advertising Methods, and maybe 10% of the people in the room raised their hand. Now these are people who just spent thousands of dollars to go through a conference on copywriting and they had read the masters, you know, blows my freaking my mind. You can go to a library, get this book for free and read it and it is pure gold, right.

So again, Caples, Hopkins, Ogilvy, Eugene Schwartz anything by Mark Ford too, more modern day, Mark is absolute brilliant guy. Ready, Fire, Aim is awesome. He wrote copy logic with Mike Palmer, is also awesome.

So you know, that would be my advise you know, to go to those guys and read all of the masters first and then start building up what they already knew what 100 years ago, 50 years ago.

Jeremy Reeves: They figured it out a long time ago. I cannot even imagine what they could do if they were alive now with all the you know, split testing, so easy now and all that kind of stuff, it is just (inaudible 50:06.0) brilliant, but yeah, I totally agree. For anybody listening, if you know, they were a lot of things for (inaudible 50:12.3) so I will -- I will put all of my favorite books which are basically the same ones into the show notes so you can go and I will have the links to all of them and all that kind of stuff so you do not have to worry about remembering all the different names. You just click on the link.

Well, hey, Clayton, I really appreciate you coming on. It was really fun for me. I was really looking forward to this interview as a copywriter myself. You are kind of a you know, you are one of the legends you know, so it was an honor having you on.

Before we hop off you know, what can people do to find out more about you, get in touch you know, wherever you want to -- wherever you want to send them.

Clayton Makepeace: Well, you can contact American Writers and Artist Institute. You can go to their site, awaionline.com and poke around, looking for me. If you cannot find information on my mastermind group you can always send an email though to help you out.

Also, ask them about August, I am going to be doing an intensive, I think it is going to be in Denver and the point of this intensive is basically speed writing, I am known as one of the fastest copywriters out there and I am going to take for 3 days, I am going to take a group of 50 writers and we are going to -- I am going to teach them my method for creating really great sales pages in a week or less. So check that out too.

Jeremy Reeves: Sounds fun. I am going to check that out myself actually.

Sounds good. It was -- again, it was a pleasure having you off and we will talk to you soon.

Clayton Makepeace: Alright, take care. Thanks for having me.

Jeremy Reeves: Thanks.