I get asked a lot, "Steve, how do I choose what market to sell into?" Well, here's some of the basic criteria I put an audience through to see if I should sell to them...

Hey. What's going on everyone? This is Steve Larsen, and you're listening to Sales Funnel Radio. I've spent the last four years learning from the most brilliant marketers today, and now I've left my 9 to 5 to take the plunge and build my million-dollar business. The real question is how will I do it without VC funding or debt, completely from scratch? This podcast is here to give you the answer. Join me and follow along as I learn, apply and share marketing strategies to grow my online business using only today's best internet sales funnels. My name is Steve Larsen, and welcome to Sales Funnel Radio.

What's up guys? Hey. I'm super excited for this. I know I'm publishing a lot right now. It's because I have a lot of thoughts, especially after Funnel Hacking Live. That is like throwing gas on the fire for my brain, and I love it. Hey. I am very, very excited for what I want to share with you. I sat back a while ago, and I was sitting down. I was thinking through how many businesses I had tried before ever actually getting one that really started going off the ground. As I looked back and I started realizing it's like, I don't know, 14, 15, 16, 17. I mean, it's a lot. I was going through and I was numbering all the products I had created. I was like, wow, okay, I kind of first started with this one. Then I went to this one. I was like, wow, it's really fascinating.

To look back. I encourage you all to do this. I seriously, seriously doubt, and almost bet on my life that I am not the only one who's tried a billion different products, lots of different businesses and failed at a ton of them, meaning of this audience who listens to this. I encourage you to go sit down and start writing those down. It's kind of a neat thing to look back and realize, like why did that fail? Why did that fail? Why did that fail? One of the lessons that I've learned was tossed back into my head.

I've had a few people asking me a few questions lately, especially with the recent program, Two-Comma Club X Coaching, that I'm one of the coaches for and that ClickFunnel has just released. A lot of people have been coming to me saying, "Hey, Steven, is this a good idea? Is this a good market? Is this a good product?" Well, first off, I'm not going to know your industry like you are, okay, but I do know the models and patterns that show if it is something typically good to go into usually. Okay, okay.

When it comes down to it, like we can teach the models, we can teach the patterns and then after awhile it's guessing. You know, you just have to launch it after awhile and just see if it actually sticks. There's a lot of patterns and stuff that we can walk through to help shave off bad ideas. Anyway, I was recently talking with someone and I had this memory come to my head. Back before I started using ClickFunnels and I was building funnels inside of GetResponse, literally, like the email provider, right, GetResponse autoresponder.

They have a landing page software, and I was building essentially funnels on their landing page software. It was terrible. It was so jenky. Anyway, I would like sneeze and half of it would get scrambled. It was the weirdest thing. Anyway, but it's all I had, so I was trying to do that. It's very much part of my character that as soon as I start selling something or as soon as I've learned something and I know it can help other people, I want to go tell them about it. Say, did you know you can do this? Oh my gosh! Check it out? Right? Which is why I think I podcast the way I do.

Anyway, one of the people that I wanted to go present this to was a door-to-door company, okay, a door-to-door selling company. I had already done one summer of door-to-door sales at that time, and Vivint, like Vivint Home Security. They had a huge office near the place where I was living at the time. This was six years ago. It was quite a while ago. Five years ago, six years ago, something like that. Anyway, so I walked on in to Vivint and I sat down with some of the owners. It wasn't the "owners" of Vivint, but it was before their massive buyout.

They got bought for like $2.4 billion or something for only like 75% of their company. They still maintained 25%, which is crazy. Crazy! Oh my gosh! Can you imagine that? Anyways, it very well may have been some of the top guys because that buyout had not happened yet at the time.

Anyway, so I was chatting with them and I was telling them, hey, did you know, you've got these sales agents that are out there doing this and that, right, these reps that are going around. Think about the cost of supporting a rep. Think about this. I could build you this thing that I'm doing called a funnel and we could like totally ... and I started giving them my ideas of basically and front-end funnel, super awesome. I ended up buying like doortodoorsellingsecrets.com or something like that and a whole bunch of other tons of URLs for that.

I really like the door-to-door sales game. I think sales is one of the most prestigious, I don't know, careers ever. Call me bias, but I think it's true...

Anyway, so I was sitting there and I was telling them about it, and I was like, hey! To be completely honest, I know it would work. I know it would work. Right? It fits all the models. It fits all the patterns. I was like, think about that. This is like having tons of sales agents in lots of cities that you don't have to pay to support. It's all on a website. They were like, "Whoa. That's crazy." It turned out that like they just didn't want it. They just did not want it. Okay. I was like, okay. I was a little bit frustrated. I spent like a couple hours in there teaching them, pitching them, helping them realize. They were like, "Wow, that's amazing. Okay. Let us work this up the chain a little bit and we'll get back to you on that." If you guys have ever done any sales that basically means no. I was like, crap.

I walked out and I was like, why didn't they see it? How come they didn't get the value? Right? I guarantee every one of us has had that experience before in some fashion. Okay? You're looking at a customer. You're looking at somebody you know you could help. You can't help them for free because that negates progress rules and laws, okay, right, for the most part. You couldn't do it for free.

Anyway, you could not, however, sell them on the fact that this was something that they need, right, that it would drastically improve their life or their business. That's a frustrating thing to sit back and go through. I've been through that tons of times, tons of times, and you guys probably have as well. I recently had someone reach out and ask the question, hey, I've been trying to sell in this area to these people and I just can't sell to them. I don't get it.

Why isn't this happening? I had all those memories rush back into my head. You know, I've had the unique experience over the last year and a half-ish, over a year, to coach. I was putting the numbers together. It's almost 900 people that I've had the honor to coach in this process, 900. Okay. You know how many offers I've gotten a chance to see, how many funnels, how many industries? It's crazy. It's crazy. Okay.

Before we ever launched Two-Comma Club X Coaching, I was the main coach. I was the only coach, okay, for well over 700 people, and then there's a ton of other people on my own as well. I was thinking through all the lessons and I was looking at the patterns and I was like, man, this is really fascinating. It is a unique perspective to be in. How can I share some of these lessons? Like I said, someone reached out and they asked, like, how come people aren't buying this?

I immediately in my head was, this came to my mind, well, you did not choose a money market. That's exactly what popped in my head. You did not choose a money market. They don't want what you're trying to sell. You know they need it, but they don't want it. Right?

What I wanted to do is I wanted to walk through real quick some of the criteria, the major foundational criteria that I go through before I ever start putting together an offer, before I ever start putting together a sales message.

You guys know, like in the past little bit here I've gone over the core of what a funnel actually is, right, but before I even get to that stuff, man, you have got to turn around and you have got to figure out if the people you're selling to even want your stuff.

Let's go through a few of these items. Sound good? Okay, that's what this episode specifically is about, is I want to help you understand, like I'm not telling you that you can't make money if you don't fit these criteria. I am telling you it is a lot easier and faster to choose a market industry, a money market. That's what I meant. Money market, not market industry.

Choose a money market, okay. Oh my gosh, it helps so much. I was drawing out and I was doodling this stuff out and I was like, yeah, these are the lessons and you have to have this here and like this part over here. We're talking about speed because you can make money in a lot of different ways and places where people don't want your stuff.

I want to tell you from my own perspective, from my own experience, selling my own stuff, helping other people sell a lot of their stuff, helping the people get in the Two-Comma Club. What I have seen these patterns be as to the speed aspect to this, when we talk about the only two numbers we care about in a funnel is average cart value and cost to acquire, but cost to acquire is not just about money. It's also about time. If your cost to acquire, time wise, is huge, I'm not saying that you can't make a whole bunch of money.

I am saying that your cost to acquire is gigantic. It's huge. This episode specifically, I've spent quite a bit of time, more than I usually do, brainstorming out this topic and fleshing it out and trying to distill down for us all more of these elements that help drastically decrease your cost to acquire, time wise. Okay, speed, to get the speed up. Are you sufficiently pre framed? Okay, cool. Let's go on.

Number one, when we talk about health, wealth and relationships, the reason why, again, that we go back to those health, wealth and relationships, those three markets, are there other markets I'm sure, but those are the three no-duh buying markets. Just like we've talked about before, a no-duh product, a no-duh, like an obvious thing you would go purchase. There's not a salesman next to a gas station. You're going to buy gas. Right? There's not a salesman next to eggs or bread or milk in the grocery store, right? There's not. It's a no-duh buying experience. People are just going to go buy it. They're going to.

They expect to buy it. There's not a salesman for your utility bills. They expect to purchase there. Does that make sense? The reason why health, wealth and relationships are such powerful things is because they are areas where people expect to spend money. They expect it, right. I expect to spend money going to the gym for health. I expect to spend money. Everyone says, like, it takes money to make money, which is total crap, meaning it's an expectation, though, right? Relationships. People are willing. They expect to spend cash if they were ever going to go to a therapist or spend money going to a conference or even a date, right? It's going to take some money, typically, right? Those three areas, that's why.

Like I've said in the past, while your product itself does not need to naturally fit inside those, your sales message must, okay, but it is way easier if you choose one of those three money markets. Health, wealth and relationships are three money markets. That's the first filter. Does my product fit in health, wealth and relationships? If it does not, can I make the offer. If it does not I at least, at bare minimum, have got to make this sales message fit in one of those three. That's the first criteria. Choose a freakin' money market. It's so much easier.

All right. One of the next things. Was Vivint able to spend money to hire me to build a suite funnel for them? I was not nearly as experienced six years ago. I think that was six years ago. If not, it was at least five. Anyway, are they able? Oh, yeah. They've got cash. Oh, yeah. Are they willing? No, or they weren't at the time. Maybe someone hears this, they'll come back to me and hire me. I'd love that, by the way, if someone wants to reach out. That would be a lot of fun. I've got some sweet ideas for you guys. Anyway, there's a ton of people that are able to spend money. They're just not willing.

You've got to find this magic combination of the two. If you find people who are able to spend money, meaning they have it, but they're not willing, it means you're selling a need, not a want. If you're selling a need and not a want you automatically are getting inside of an improvement-based offer. In your head you're at least categorized that way, okay, in their head, even if you really are in a new opportunity.

Anyway, if I'm talking like straight techno babble here guys, go read Expert Secrets again, okay, and Innovator's Dilemma and Dot Com Secrets and Growth Hacking by Ryan Holiday. In fact, it's funny. As I started doodling all this stuff out and I was like, oh, yeah, Growth Hacker, and I went and picked it up and it literally says, Step Number One. I was like, oh, Ryan and I need to hang out. He says "Step number one, it begins with a product market fit," okay. Paul Graham says, "Make something people want." That was the first thing in the whole book and I was like, yes, that's exactly what I'm talking about.

Stop selling freakin' needs and the way that you sell them is by selling the people that are both willing and able by choosing a money market and selling, which is the third thing here, to irrational buyers. They have to be irrational about it. They have to be like the psycho people, the people that go and they hang out in front of

The Apple Store before the new iPhone comes out, when they very well could go purchase one the very next week without spending the night in a tent in front of the store, right? You've got to find the irrational purchasers, and if you are not selling to a category that is irrational about what they are doing, right, a cult, basically, if you're not selling to those, it's very hard. You start selling more into the need category.

Needs, needs. Improvement-based offer. If I'm going to go sell a need, that's an improvement-based offer, and what's happening is by default you must start selling by competing on price. Since they don't necessarily want it, they at least don't want to feel like they're getting taken, so they start nickling and diming you down. I don't know if it's worth this much. Bleed for me more. Bleed. Right?

No, no. Sacrifice for me more. You end up getting clients and you end up getting customers and you end up getting a following that is not ... They're there because they feel like, yeah, okay, yeah, because of all these logical reasons I do need it rather than, I've to have this! Oh, my gosh, get out of my way. You've got to find people.

Anyway, so, number one, choose a money market. Number two, sell to people that are both willing and able and then, number three, sell to people who are irrational. They are ridiculous about the thing you're actually selling. What's cool about this is one of the other categories that I start looking at is, now that like, you guys know that I sell in the MLM space a lot, right. Right now, that's what I'm doing. I love it, and the reason I chose it is because, number one, it's in a money market, wealth.

They believe they'll get wealth through the vehicle of MLM, right. Number two, they're willing. A lot of people are not able, though. Stereotypically, a lot of MLMers don't have a lot of money, stereotypically, right. A lot of them, it's the first thing they ever get into. Don't lie to me. You've probably been in a few MLMs yourself. We all have, right. The category of person that I'm selling to inside of that market definitely is willing and able.

And then, number three, they are definitely irrational purchasers, okay. Those are some of the categories that I went to to choose that market specifically. Okay.

The next thing I go through, and I do this all the time, I look through and you don't necessarily need this part, but it makes it way easier if you can get this part, I like to choose a market, a customer base, that expects to pay higher ticket, right, right. You could be in the business of selling, eggs, bread and milk. Is that high ticket? No. The volume is going to be insane that you have to sell in order to make a lot of cash, right?

I like to sell in areas where it's expected to spend a lot of money, right. You don't go to a car shop, even a used car shop, without the expectation of spending at least several grand if it's a bad used car shop, right, but like if it's a nice or even like, let's say, house, right, it's expected that a lot of money flows in those areas. I like to choose where they expect, yes, you know what, I will be spending a whole bunch of cash in this. If you're like in eCommerce or you're in retail ...

I was speaking once in Vegas. It was definitely over a year ago now, I think, and I was speaking at an event. I was speaking and Anton Crowley, if you guys know who he is, he's the man who runs a company called Drop Ship Lifestyle that he put together. He spoke right before I did, and what was cool is he got up and he said that he drop ships, but he only drop ships things that are like at least a grand for this exact principal, that because people expect to pay a lot of cash in it, there's a lot of margin in there left over after he pays business costs and product costs and things like that. It's the same kind of thing. Again, it's not that you have to. Okay. It's not that you have to. I'm talking about the core of your business.

I don't expect to charge $5,000 for a free plus shipping book offer, right. It's free. You just pay $5,000 for shipping. Right? That's not what I'm talking about all. I'm talking about the core of the business, the middle of the area, the actual thing that keeps our doors open, that slightly more mid to higher ticket area, around $1,000, $500, $2,500, $3,000 around that area, selling stuff like that.

If I know that it's already an expectation, oh my gosh, it's so much easier because I don't need to go break that belief. The reason it's this value is because X, Y and Z, right. Then I've got to go start selling logical and I've got to tell even more stories, break even more false beliefs. It's not that you can't. It's just, I'm talking about the low-cost proposition time wise, right.

Time wise, it's going to be a lot faster for me to actually go sell when they already expect to pay higher dollar. Anyways, I think I talked about that one maybe too much...

I like to ask the question, also, how easy does this sell, not how good is the product or how good is the offer? That's good. The offer's got to be amazing as I've talked about many times, but if I could ask the question, how easy is this for them to purchase.

This fits back into the category. It's almost like the question you ask if you, the kind of checks, is it one of the three money markets, is it irrational buyers, are they willing and able? If it sells easily, right. Once you show the house, the actual sale part of it doesn't take, I mean, sometimes it can take a while to close, but you know what I mean. Like, emotionally on their side there's not tons of stuff that has to go. They expect to spend a lot of money. It sells slightly quickly. It's an expectation that it's a lot of cash they're going to have to put out. Does that make sense?

Anyway. Here's one other thing I wanted to bring up with this is that I think I was at a FAT event. One of the things that I started noticing was some people would show up to the FAT event and they'd sit in the back and they were trying to figure out what they wanted to do still. I completely get that, and I'm actually going through that a little bit right now. I'm trying to figure out what I want to be when I grow up. Okay.

What's the contribution to the world that I'm going to try to make, not just the marketing world, but the world in general. Russell is starting to ask those questions. He's doing Operation Underground Railroad stuff. Does that make sense? Okay. He's in that phase.

The first thing that he did, if you look at anybody who's really been quite successful, even 2017 Funnel Hacking Live, Jim Edwards talked about this. Okay. He talked about this. He said, "Look. The first funnel that you build is the funnel that gets you your bills paid." Right. It's just the one that matches the amount of money you were making at your job. It helps buy back some of your time. The second funnel that you're billing is really the one like, hey, man, you pay off all of your debts. You get the house that you really wanted to.

You go get the toys that you want to. And then the third, I can't remember them. He had categories for them and names for them...

The third funnel you really go build typically expect that one to be the one where like you don't need the money, but it's like the ludicrous money that frees you for the rest of your life where you go change the world and stuff like that. I think one of the things that people get stuck up on, and Simon Sinek talks about this a lot with Millennials. I'm namedropping like crazy in this episode. Simon Sinek, if you've never heard his stuff, go look him up on YouTube.

He's awesome. He talks about this with millennials a lot that one of the things that they'll get stumbled up on is this idea that you must have impact immediately. Yes, it's great if you can, but it's not the thing to get stuck on. Rather than focusing on changing the world first, focus on changing your world first. Does that makes sense?

I'm going and it was like a year and a half ago, two years ago, I launched this funnel and it totally changed my world meaning we were able to start chomping away student debt. We were able to ... I mean, it's more cash than we'd ever had. Does that make sense? It did a lot of stuff for our own finances to free us so that now I'm able to do more change-the-world style projects.

I think sometimes people will step back and they'll go, and this is a pattern I see, you know, almost 900 people coming through coaching with me now, like the thing that I'll see them doing is they're like, I need to change the world! Ahhh! Then, they've got this complex over it, and yes, that's great, but don't do that first. You know what I mean? If you can, more power to you, but if you can't don't stumble on it.

Don't make that as a reason to not get going, to get your butt off the ground and doing stuff. I feel like it's one of the areas that people will step back and be like, I'm not having an impact yet. I'm not changing the world. It's like, you're still working 9 to 5. Focus on getting your funnel out of the ground that actually gets you out of that first, right, that empowers you, that buys back your time so that you can later on, your second funnel, your third funnel, whatever, then you can go do the crazy massive personal freedom funnel, the massive change-the-world project.

Anyway, maybe I should have put that in a different episode. That could be a whole episode of itself, but it's already been a long one. I can't believe it. Anyways, I just wanted to bring that up. When I'm choosing a, especially if this is your first one out of the gate and you like haven't totally like blown something up yet, that's fine to not have this massive impact thing. First, funnel hack. See what's out there, right. Follow that yellow brick road as far as you can. Number two, then you're going out and you're adding onto where the road stopped. Right? You're in a new opportunity...

Then, when you're actually making the cash, then you're able to be more nimble anyways because you're not so concerned about getting a sale. I'm not going to eat if I don't make this sale. You're not in that area. You can actually step back and make decisions that will change the world rather than, I want to change the world, but, man, I've got to eat.

Anyway, I feel like I blended two topics in this episode, but the way I choose a market, right, market, not product, not offer, not even sales message, is I need to find an audience first. This is how I choose an audience. Maybe I'll call this episode that. This is how I choose an audience. Number one, do they fit naturally inside one of the three money markets, health, wealth and relationships. Number two, are they both willing and able? Do they freakin' want it, or are you selling a need? If not, that's fine. Rinse and repeat. Don't be afraid.

Money loves speed, right. Be fast. If you realize, oh my gosh. There's just no way I'm going to get enough volume to really make it. I'm selling something you'll need. I know it's a legitimate problem that I'm solving. Yes. Congrats. That's awesome. If they don't want it, you're already, that's rough.

Anyway, number three, are they irrational about the way that they purchase? Are they fanatics? Usually, it has to do with having a lot of culture around the market that you're selling into. Do they expect more high-ticket stuff and is it easy to sell? When it comes to you personally, that's how to choose more and more of the audience, but then you personally, as far as expectations in it, make sure the person understands that you may not be in like the massive-level impact-the-world stuff. Maybe you're just changing and impacting your own life, finances and stuff like that in your own family.

That's great. That's fine. I find a lot of people lately have like almost a complex about that. I'm not having an impact. It's like, wait a second. You just changed your world and your family's world. That's a huge impact. Are you kidding? Don't focus yet.

Anyway. All right. Hey, guys, hopefully it's helpful. Those are some of the base criteria that I run things through and then I go out and I start choosing the sales message, then I go out and I start creating the offer and then building the funnel and then rinse and repeat and going back forth. Anyway, I hope that that helped. I hope that that clarified some stuff. My real hope is that when it comes down to your expectations on this is that you give yourself a license to just change your own world first before you try to change "the world." It'll do a lot for you emotionally as you do that.

Anyway. Hey, guys. Thanks so much. Appreciate it. Hopefully you guys enjoy this episode. I would love it. I love going, I don't know, call it ego, call it motivation for me to keep doing this. I probably will anyway, but I love, love seeing the reviews. If you guys wouldn't mind I would love to have you guys go over and leave a review for me in iTunes. It means the world to me to see that.

IT helps like crazy. We're getting about 500 downloads a day right now. It's been a ton of fun. Thank you guys so much. Thanks for being a listener, and I'll talk with you later.

Hey. Thanks for listening. The most common question I get is, Steve, will you look at my funnel. Of course. Whether you want me to coach you, give some handholding and guidance during your funnel build or simply review the one you have, head over to coachmesteve.com and book your session now.

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