Summary Notes from Sell Like Crazy by Sabri Suby

One of the best books we’ve read on how to use the power of digital marketing to drive tremendous sales.

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Preparatory Phase: Your Mindset

Mindset

If you want to become a billionaire, you need to think like a billionaire. Time is the most valuable asset of billionaires

Saying no

The more successful you get, it’s what you say ‘no’ to that makes the difference

Chores

Keep you busy, but don’t make you any money.

In business, the little stuff kills the big stuff. What I mean is that there are lots of small, nit-picky things in your business constantly screaming for attention, but these aren’t the tasks that produce revenue.

As the founder of a business that you’re looking to scale, your focus needs to move from doing the everyday work to producing revenue for your business and steering the ship.

Your business is SALES

The money in business isn’t in your product or service, it’s in the selling of your product or service.

As a business owner, selling should be your number one priority – and you must act accordingly. This means spending the bulk of your time on marketing and sales-related activities.

Client’s care about their problems, not about your service

The market doesn’t pay you to have the best products or service. It rewards you for solving problems.

‘Why won’t anybody listen to me?’ It was from pondering this question that I had my first breakthrough. While it might seem obvious, I realised that nobody cared about me, my product, or anything else I was babbling about on the phone. They cared only about themselves! .. I quickly found the more the call focused on solving their problem, the more sales I made.

Know your client

Your focus should be on intimately understanding your market and your prospects’ deepest desires, pains, fears, hopes, and dreams. You need to know them better than any of your competitors, and then craft marketing messages that effectively communicate how you can solve these problems.

80:20 rule / 64:4 rule

The 80/20 rule demonstrates you can and should disregard 80% of your business activities. They should either be delegated or outsourced so you can focus on the top 20% that produce revenue.

4% of your activities create 64% of the revenue for your business.

Instead of investing their time exclusively in their super-productive 4%, too many business owners and salespeople get caught up by the minutiae of the day-to-day 96%.

And once you’ve put together a list of these vitally important revenue-producing activities, it’s time to get to work and start automating and creating systems for just about everything else.

Marketing: Salesmanship Multiplied

I transitioned from selling one-to-one to selling one-to-many.

I look at my sales message as being my salesman soldier. I look at Google Ads, Facebook ads, and radio and YouTube ads as the delivery vehicles I use to deploy that salesman soldier and deliver my message automatically without me having to exert more effort the more times I deliver it.

Sales Copy

The ability to write ads and marketing messages that sell is by far the most lethal money-making skill you could ever hope to acquire.

Your ads should make a red-hot pitch for your product or service in the same way as a salesperson would in a face-to-face selling situation.

There is no traffic problem. There is only a conversion problem

But you don’t need the latest traffic hack. You see, in today’s day and age, traffic is a commodity. Just like milk, bread, or a pack of Tim Tams. If you want to buy groceries, you go to a supermarket. And if you want to buy traffic, you go to a traffic supermarket. Just like a supermarket where you can go and buy as many groceries as you want or can afford, you can also go to a traffic supermarket and buy as many website visitors as you want or need. Literally, as many as you can handle!

When it comes to traffic, there are only two names worth mentioning. They are Google and Facebook. And they account for more than 90% of traffic online.

Why do businesses say they have a traffic problem? The truth is this: They don’t have a traffic problem! They have a conversion problem.

The real issue is converting that traffic into actual sales using a system based on unit economics that makes buying traffic profitable and self-liquidating.

Automated Selling System

To truly make big money, you’ve got to use an automated selling system to get your sales message in front of huge numbers of people all at the same time. 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.

You need an automated lead generation and client conversion system that turns advertising into profit.

Advertising: The highest return on investment

The most dependable and predictable way to grow sales and generate wealth is to turn advertising into profit.

Investing in advertising that attracts high-value prospects and then converts that traffic into bona fide sales and clients is the smartest, most lucrative investment you’ll ever make.

Advertising is an investment that makes more money than anything else. Period.

You should only have a marketing budget if your marketing isn’t working. Because if you’re putting $1 in and getting $3 back… Why wouldn’t you want to invest as much as your cash flow allows?

PHASE 1: Understand And Identify Your Dream Buyer

Customer Intent Pyramid

Moving clients up the sales funnel

The goal is to move the 97% of potential customers up the pyramid faster. Because believe it or not, even ‘disinterested’ prospects can turn into lucrative customers if you know how to approach them. The problem is that most people treat every lead like the 3% who are ready to buy now. They have no systems in place to capture and nurture the other 97%.

If you are the one educating them, you’re also making sure that when they hit the ‘buy now’ stage, they’ll be likely to buy from you. To do this, your message must be powerful, insightful, and education-based, and not simply a promotional piece about your company.

The key is to install a system that: Attracts, Educates, Nurtures & Gets prospects to act!

The best way to do this is through what’s called a sales funnel. This technique shifts a prospect up each stage of the pyramid over a period of a few weeks.

Your most valuable customers (the power 4%)

The Pareto Principle is exponential! Let me explain. We already know that 20% of your customers represent 80% of your revenue. But within that initial 20%, the 80/20 rule also applies. Meaning the top 20% of the top 20% of your customers (or the top 4% overall) represent 64% of your sales (calculated as 80% times 80%).

Customer Peronsa

You must know your customer intimately!

Enter the conversation already taking place in the customer’s mind’.

Once you identify your Power 4%, you want to look at what characteristics they share. Start with the obvious data including age, location, and education level. In addition to this, you then need to look at what products or services they enquired about and how they found you or what channel they came in from. This gives you incredibly valuable information you can use with a variety of marketing tools to find the same type of customers out there who don’t know about your business yet.

Search on Google for popular blogs, LinkedIn forums, YouTube comment sections, Amazon reviews, Reddit, Quora, and social media platforms. Go wherever your audience hangs out and congregates. Look at what your audience is saying and feeling. What are they happy with? What are they unhappy with? Look at their concerns and questions. Notice any themes? Are they banging their head against the wall on the same issue over and over?

To read the mind of your prospects and know exactly the questions they’re asking during the research and buying cycle, the auto-suggest results provided by Google and Bing are a goldmine of insights.

Answerthepublic.com

Other great places to look are Facebook Groups and pages around your market and niche. These are goldmines for valuable information.

Knowing your dream buyer changes everything – your product and service offering, your marketing strategy, value proposition, pricing, tone of your copy, what channels you advertise on, and more.

Focusing on your dream buyer brings clarity to your marketing message, and your copy becomes sharp and hard like the tip of a spear that cuts through the noise in your marketplace,

9 Questions to Define Your Dream Buyer

1. Where does your dream buyer hang out and congregate?
2. Where does your dream buyer get their information? — your place to market
3. What are their biggest frustrations and challenges?
4. What are their hopes, dreams, and desires?
5. What are their biggest fears?
6. What is their preferred form of communication? — use this channel
7. What phrases, exact language, and vernacular do they use? — use this in your communication
8. What does a day in your dream buyer’s life look like? — identify the best time to get their attention
9. What makes them happy?

Phase 2: Create the Perfect Bait for Your Dream Buyer

Most ads are targeted to only the 3% of customers looking to buy now

The typical full-page new home ad has the company name at the top and some sort of ‘SALE’ or ‘DISPLAY HOMES NOW OPEN’ headline predominantly placed. It’s exactly the same as all the other homebuilders taking up all the other advertisement pages. They’re practically leaving it to random chance to compete for their share of that 3% of people who are buying now. Now imagine the ad began with this headline: WARNING: Do Not Buy A New House Before Reading This Shocking Free Report…

Target the 97%: Offer Value & Information

Most people get this wrong and immediately try to sell to the 97%, but the fact is, fast selling doesn’t work with cold traffic.

The temperature of your marketing message must match the temperature of your traffic.

If you present information that reads like a public service announcement, you’re guaranteed to stand out from the crowd in a huge way. Ads like this incentivise prospects, drawing them towards you with the promise of value and, importantly, no sales pitch.

The valuable information you’re offering here is called a High-Value Content Offer (HVCO), and it draws leads to you like moths to a flame. HVCOs come in multiple forms – free reports, ebooks, videos, cheat sheets – but the goal is always the same: to offer your prospects incredible value, typically in the form of the solution to a problem they’re struggling with, without asking them to purchase anything in return. In return for all the value you’re providing, all you ask for is their name and email address.

‘Giving before asking’, value-based marketing is about offering value to your customers without asking for a sale in return.

Long-form copy

Only Marketing Morons Believe That No One Reads Long-Form Copy

‘But who reads all that text?’ The buyers are the ones who read it. They are the ones who have all the burning questions, the ones who are looking for answers.

Make sure to add value with your free content

When you offer information as an incentive, make sure it’s substantive rather than the cheap gibberish that clogs the Internet. This is the very first exchange of value your prospect makes with your business.

The goal is to wow them with this experience. If done right, this will prompt a conversation to take place in their mind: ‘If this is what they’re giving away for free, imagine what their paid products/services are like!’

There are three ways we can influence people: Talk about how good we are. Have others talk about how good we are. Demonstrate how good we are. In sales and marketing, #3 is the most effective.

3 Rules for HVCO (High Value Content Offer)

There are three rules you must follow when putting together the kind of HVCO that will explode your sales: HVCO Rule #1: Create an Attention-Grabbing Headline HVCO Rule #2: Make sure every point touches a burning issue. HVCO Rule #3: Keep it simple.

HVCO Rule #1: Create An Attention-Grabbing Headline

Exact same book… The product was the same. But he changed the title to this: How to Satisfy a Woman Every Time… and Have Her Beg for More!

Identify your Dream Buyer’s single most pervasive and persistent hair-on-fire problem – and then offer them the single most valuable and immediate solution.

The title of your free report is the number one factor in the pulling power of your HVCO and will largely be responsible for the amount of people that enter your funnel… and the amount of sales you make.

People browsing the web are basically sleepwalkers and you must jolt them awake like an electric shock.

Headline Essentials

• Attention Grabbing: Grabs your reader and practically forces them to ready your material. Magazines are a great example of businesses that have mastered this art
• Use Numbers: Provide a tangible object or logical idea for readers
• Create Irresistible Intrigue: by using words such as ‘Must’, ‘Alarming’, ‘Shocking’, ‘Won’t Tell You’, ‘Exposed!’ ‘Revealed’ ‘Confession!’ ‘Horror’ ‘Secret’
• Show them what’s in it for them: add as many specific and vivid details as possible

Timeless Formulaes for headlines

• X ways to achieve [Desirable Thing] without doing [Undesirable Thing]
• [Do Difficult Thing] in [Specific Period of Time] Even if [Shortcomings]
• Timeless Formula #3 Achieve [Desirable Thing] like [An Expert] Even Without [Something Expected] Example:
• How to Eliminate [Biggest Problem] without doing [The Thing They Hate] Within [Specific Timeframe]

HCVO Tip #2: Make Sure Every Point Touches A Burning Issue

If you’re writing a report or an ebook, do this in the sub-heads to ensure anyone just skimming it will get pulled in.

HCVO Tip #3: Keep It Simple

Phase 3) Capture Leads and get Contact Details

Never jump right into a sale

This is where I see 99% of businesses getting it wrong. They approach their prospects like an army would attack a walled city – with a full frontal assault. They send traffic straight to a landing page, or even worse, their homepage, and attempt to go straight for the sale and pray they’ll make a profit. They simply disregard all the necessary steps that take place to turn a stranger into a satisfied, paying client. They are far too eager to make a sales pitch.

No wining, no dining… nothing!

Your opt-in Page

When building your opt-in page, you should include these elements:

• A headline that grabs your reader by the throat.
• A subheadline that restates your offer and what they’re getting.
• Ultra-compelling fascination bullets: Short and punchy explanation of how the content is going to help your prospect and make sure they’re oozing with intrigue.
• A visual representation of what they’re getting – a free report, cheat sheet, etc.
• A basic form for people to enter their name and email to access the content.

Headline Formula: Finally! How to Get [DESIRED RESULT] Without [THING THEY FEAR MOST] in [SPECIFIC TIME FRAME] – Guaranteed. ‘[PROBLEM]? Get My [SOLUTION] and [RESULT]’

Ultra-Compelling Fascination Bullets: Bullet copy or fascination bullets are small nuggets of tantalising teaser information that intrigue the reader while offering or implying a benefit. They’re designed to crank up the curiosity of your prospect and make not opting-in virtually impossible.

Instead of barraging prospects with blatant benefits, you want to craft bullet copy that teases, tantalises, and tempts prospects — intensifying their curiosity to almost unbearable levels, and then inviting them to satisfy that curiosity for free, simply by opting in.

Fascination Bullet Copy Formulas: How to X without Y / You need X, right? Wrong! / X ways to Y / Where to find Y / How to eliminate X / What you should never / Say goodbye to X [frustration] / The truth about Y / Have you been doing X wrong?

Visual Representation: It’s not enough to just tell your prospects about what they’re going to get. You need to show them, and make it polished so the perceived value is very high.

Contact Information: The less information you ask for, the higher the conversion rate on your opt-in page. I suggest collecting just two pieces of data: their name and email address. We’ll then use email automation to nurture these prospects over time.

PHASE 4: The Godfather Strategy

An offer they can’t refuse

Make Your Prospects An Offer They Can’t Refuse

Less than 1% of the businesses I consult with have this right before I work with them. They don’t have any resemblance of an irresistible offer. Instead, they are using resistible offers and wonder why their business is stuck.

The idea of a compelling offer is to remove all friction for a prospect to buy from you. You want to reverse that risk and burden and make it an absolute no-brainer for your prospects to take you up on your offer. In

Sell Benefits NOT Features

The very first step in the process is this: Sell What People Want To Buy

Create A Detail Sheet: Features And Benefits. this sheet you should have two columns, column one should be titled ‘Features’ and this is where you list the full list of the features of what you are selling. The second column should be titled ‘Benefits’. This column is where you convert all the features into corresponding benefits.

Offer Basics: What are you selling? _______ How much does it cost? _______ Who will take immediate action on this offer? ________ How do you claim/buy it? ________

Start with outrageous

I want you to come up with the most powerful offer you can put down in writing. It should be no more than a few lines. Make it outrageous.

Now it’s down on paper, start pulling it back to something that you can actually back up and deliver on and that won’t get you sued for false advertising.

Competing offers

Again, I’ve done a quick Google search to see what kind of offers people are running in that market. This is a very important thing to do. You want to see the environment your offer is going to be competing in.

What makes a good offer?

Examples of Irresistible Offers (Godfather offers): … ‘We’ll build your new home in just 30 weeks or give you $5,000 in cash’. … ‘Guaranteed Google rankings in 90 days or we work for free’.

‘If the offer and the guarantee don’t keep the founder up at night, then they’re not strong enough’.

You need to create a response from your prospects like, ‘How can they possibly offer this?’ Or, ‘How can they guarantee so much?’ Or, ‘Are these people out of their minds?’

Make it Believable

Compelling offers begin with a clear and credible explanation of why you’re making such an outrageously generous offer. Whatever your reasoning and rationale for the amazing, truly spectacular and almost unbelievable offer you’re making, put it up in lights and make it abundantly clear to ensure your offer is believable.

Establish the Value of your Offer

You want to build the value of your offer based on the usual everyday price – this can be what you normally charge or even what your competition is charging.

Show, don’t tell: Where possible, it’s very important to include screenshots of other websites and catalogues. This makes it even more believable to the everyday sceptic that this is indeed true and you aren’t building superficial value or hype. Then, illustrate in great detail (sell) why even at full price your product is an incredible deal. Show how your product or service is a mere pittance to what they will make or save, even at the regular price.

If you’re generating leads, your offer might be a free consultation. If that’s the case, you still need to attach a dollar amount to the consultation and you still need to sell hard to get people to take you up on your offer, even if it’s free.

The Value of Premiums

These are the free gifts that prospects receive along with the product they’re purchasing.

‘But wait… there’s more! You’ll also get this free set of steak knives – if you order right now!’ The reason premiums are used is because they work. Having a hot premium can double or triple your sales.

Power Guarantee

The stronger your guarantee, the better. The role of the guarantee is to reverse the risk for the prospect and place it on you, the business, thus removing some of the friction before making the sale.

If you’re not willing to guarantee any element of the products and services you sell, why on Earth should anybody trust you with their hard-earned money? How are you different from all the other companies they’ve done business with, only to be left with empty promises and disappointment?

You want to lead with the Godfather Strategy, which is to make them an offer that’s so good they can’t refuse. And then you want to back that up with the whole ‘you can’t lose’ guarantee, and reverse all that risk.

In order to fully capitalise on the selling power of your guarantee, you must grasp the primal psychology behind it. The primary thing to realise is this: In any given transaction between two parties, there will always be risk present. In most cases, one side will be asked to assume the burden of this risk, and more often than not, it’s generally the buyer, and not the seller.

Think about your guarantee as a proof element to your overall offer – proof of how confident you are about delivering on every promise your offer makes.

As unlikely as it is that you’ll be making good on your guarantee (remember, fewer than 5% of customers will ever take you up on it), you want to create an attractive payback in case a customer is unsatisfied. Ideally,

Scarcity

Offers without scarcity don’t sell as well, but it needs to be genuine or you’ll erode brand trust with your prospects. Think about it, if you don’t need to take action now, when will you take it? Never.

Scarcity has been shown time and time again to dramatically increase the pulling power of offers. The best marketers use it because it works. Injecting scarcity into your offer tells prospects they’re being offered something unique – but they need to act fast!

Why guarantees are not high risk?

Know this, for every dishonest scammer who takes advantage of your liberal guarantee policy, you’ll get five honest prospects to say ‘yes’ when they otherwise would have been too uneasy or sceptical to buy.

Booking a free consultation

If you’re a coach, consultant, freelancer, or run a professional services business and your goal is to generate leads, your Godfather Offer should be about making an offer for a free 30, 45, or 60 minute phone consultation, analysis, strategy session, or roadmap.

Therefore, we want to make an offer to get as many of the people who raised their hand and identified themselves as being interested in what you’re selling by downloading your HVCO to book in a call and speak to you.

This call must have a high perceived value, and it must stand alone as something of value whether or not they choose to buy from you. You need to detail exactly what the prospect will get during the call and how it will help get them one step closer to their goal.

Sabri Suby’s 17-Step Secret Selling System

1. Call out to your audience: at the start of yoru ads, landing page or sales letter
2. Demand their attention: Use a big promise headline,
3. Back up your big promise: After your big promise headline, back it up with a straightforward explanation in the subheadline.
4. Create irresistible intrigue: It’s now time to dial up the intrigue with some bullet points. Each bullet should call out the difference pains, fears, hopes, and dreams of your target market and add an element of intrigue.
5. Shine a floodlight on the problem: Identify the audience (who they are, how they feel) or tell a story about a problem, a struggle, or a challenge.
6. Provide the solution: Reveal a solution to their problem with your products or services and then prove this solution is the best viable option that exists. Demonstrate clearly how it’s different from all the other solutions they have tried which failed.
7. Show your credentials
8. Detail the benefits: People don’t care about you or your product or service, they only care about what it will do for them. Features tell and benefits sell, so talk only in benefits. Use bullet points to call them out. Make
9. Social proof
10. Make your godfather offer
11. Add bonuses
12. Stack the value
13. Reveal your price
14. Inject scarcity
15. Give a powerful guarantee
16. Call to action (CTA)
17. Close with a P.S. that includes a warning and a reminder

PHASE 5: Traffic

The Critical Importance Of Unit Economics

You have a firm grip on your unit economics, you’ll know exactly how much a customer is worth to your business over their lifetime.

Know how much you make from a customer, and you’ll know how much you can spend to get one.

Keep in mind that while many businesses (including marketing agencies) often think they just need more traffic, in reality what you need is an offer that converts traffic profitably.

The Right Channels for your Leads

Most successful businesses build multiple flows of traffic to maintain their flow of leads.

Start with one channel (SEO, Google Ads, Facebook Ads, Instagram Ads, YouTube, LinkedIn, etc.). It depends on your budget as to which one you should choose first. Once you establish an offer that converts profitably and you’re making more than you’re spending, get clear on your cost per lead (CPL) and cost per acquisition (CPA) of getting a new client on this channel.

Clients in the Buy Mode

The first type, at the tip of the pyramid, is in buy mode. These guys are on Google, actively searching. They know they have a problem. They’re looking for a solution in the products and services you provide. These prospects are generally best to reach through Google Ads or SEO, and they have a very high purchase intent.

Targeting prospects in buy mode is best done using either Google Ads or SEO, and focusing on those super-high purchase-intent keywords and phrases. Here, you’re specifically targeting the prospects who are fully aware they have a need and they’re just searching for the right person to do business with.

97% of customers not in the Buy Mode

The second group of prospects are in the awareness stage. They’re not actively searching but they are aware they have a problem and they’re open to buying.

A cold prospect isn’t searching and doesn’t even know they have a problem or a need. But they are still a good candidate for the products or services you sell. This represents the largest segment of your market, and of any market out there.

While targeting prospects in the awareness stage can be done using a whole bunch of platforms including Google, LinkedIn, Instagram Ads, Facebook or YouTube, I recommend the only two to consider are Google and Facebook. They’re the only grown-ups in the room. These guys have the duopoly on traffic online because they have the lion’s share of the data. This means they can offer incredible targeting features that help you identify prospects who show buyer intent,

Your message needs to be tailored to the temperature of your audience

If your message is not speaking to the temperature of your audience, it’s never going to work. If your customers are cold, then offer a more cold-suitable call to action (CTA) such as a quiz, free guide, or competition. If your customers are piping hot, don’t beat around the bush – take them straight to the shopping cart.

The series of steps to make a sale

Marketing is much like dating. There are a series of steps and events that must take place in order for a relationship to develop and get more serious.

Instead of capturing a lead by using a HVCO, building value through using the Magic Lantern Technique (we’ll get to that in phase 6), educating your prospects, and only then asking the prospect to buy, most businesses are out there screaming at the prospects to buy straight out the gate.

The job of an act is to sell the click – not make a sale

The job of an ad is not to make a sale. It’s one and only job is to funnel prospects off the medium they’re on – Google, Facebook, etc. – by getting them to click.

You can never, ever sell somebody from your ad.

Your ads should demand attention and compel readers to click, not buy.

How do you get their attention and what drives a click? The answer is primal desire that can be provoked in a number of ways: CURIOSITY & INTRIGUE SHOCK DIRECT BENEFIT IMPLIED BENEFIT FEAR VANITY SELF-INTEREST

Nothing about this ad is selling anything. No one is ever going to buy off the ad, so why try to sell them? Instead, offer something that’s so irresistible, something that has so much intrigue that people can’t help but click. I then go on to build the social proof ‘100,000 Downloads’ and add urgency ‘Ends Soon, Act Now!’

Google Ads

Now, one thing I want to highlight is that writing the perfect headline for your ad is a process. Don’t try and nail the killer headline for your pay per click or Google Ads campaign the first time around. In my experience, it takes a minimum of 20 attempts to get the best headline.

You need to be provocative. You need to shock people. You need to say the opposite of what your competition is saying.

Facebook Ads

94% of Facebook’s monthly active audience are accessing the app through their mobile device.

Note: this makes it imp that the landing page they go to is mobile optimised

There’s such rich data and laser-targeted criteria for reaching your hardest to reach, best prospects and dream buyers, and you can access them in a matter of seconds.

With Facebook, you can laser in on those who are good candidates for your services even though they may not even know it yet.

Breaking News works best on Facebook

BuzzSumo is a powerful online research tool that shows us the kind of content that gets shared the most. On Facebook in 2017, BuzzSumo shows us that breaking news articles and exclusives made up the largest and most popular category in terms of shares and engagement.

It’s content that reports some sort of findings, news, or research that does incredibly well on Facebook and can be applied to all businesses.

We’re talking about channelling people’s desire to engage with content that looks like news. Remember, your ad has one job and that’s to get people to click. In order to do that it should look like breaking news or an exclusive article, because we know that will compel people to click on your ad, read it, and engage. The ad is the tip of the spear, and it’s not to be confused with trying to do the job of any of the other steps in your funnel. We’re not trying to get people’s contact details. We’re not trying to get people to buy services or call directly off the ad. We’re not even trying to get the viewer to know right off the bat who we are or what we’re selling! That will come quickly – but it’s not the first thing we present to them.

We’ve discussed what drives a click, and that’s curiosity, intrigue, shock, or direct benefit that a person stands to get from clicking on the ad. That’s the big promise we’re going to offer in our ads.

Ad Copy Tips

You don’t need to reinvent the wheel or try to be a world -class copywriter. I’m giving you a model and a proven system that I already know works. You can just swipe it and deploy it in your own business, and watch those leads start coming in.

Another great way to find popular content types is to go to BuzzSumo and type in the topic you’re interested in.

Examples of Breaking News Headlines: ‘The Best Piece of Money Advice in Your 30s from a Financial Planner’ / ‘After 10 Years as a Financial Planner I’ve Realized Almost Everyone Gets the Same Thing Wrong About Money’.

It is an incredibly busy world out there. That’s why breaking or shocking news articles are the kinds of things that stop people in their tracks and demands their attention.

Facebook Ad Key Components

The Intro Text: This is why you go straight in with the news angle or call out your audience at the very top, whether it’s ‘Attention business owners’, or ‘Attention mothers over the age of 25’, or whatever it might be. Test different lengths of copy in here. We do very long form copy, and then we do short-form copy. In most instances longer-form copy will do the best job but it’s good to test everything.

The Ad Image: Facebook is a native advertising platform, meaning that advertising should look like normal content being shared. People tune out things that look like adverts. Your ad images shouldn’t look like an ad. Facebook doesn’t like ad images with text.

The Link Headline: 12 to 18 words are the optimum number for high-performing Facebook ad headlines. 80 to 95 characters appears optimal.

The Link Description: The content below the headline, the link description, fleshes out your headline and gives readers a little bit more detail around what’s going to be behind that click.

The Call to Action Button: There are a number of different alternatives you can use including ‘Enquire now’, ‘Learn more’, or ‘Download’, for example. We’ve found that ‘Learn more’ is the least threatening and converts best at the moment.

The Display URL: The display URL is the web address of the page to which the prospect is going to be sent.

Phase 6) The Magic Lantern Technique

The Gradual Sale

Once they’ve opted-in, they become a prospect, and you can market to them, virtually for free, using email. We find a combination of email with video generally works best.

But what about the other 97%? They enter your funnel, but because they’re still undecided, they don’t take the next step to scheduling a call or purchase.

I said the biggest profit opportunity online lies in the 97% of prospects who aren’t in ‘buy now’ mode? They are the biggest market, and marketing to them can give you a huge advantage over your competitors. You just need to know how to treat them.

The Magic Lantern Technique

Someone who would identify with and download an HVCO is someone who is in a less desirable ‘before’ state and wants the benefits promised by the HVCO.

The Magic Lantern Technique is like guiding your prospects down a metaphorical path to their desired end state. Along the way, you provide a ton of value and all the goodwill that comes with it.

The Magic Lantern Technique and send these fence-sitters a video sequence that teaches them something that ultimately moves them closer to their desired outcome.

This is a series of two or three videos that give them pure value.

At the end of each video you include a call to action.

MQ Tip: The CTA needs to be a gentle one, that let’s your client know how to get in touch with you and not a hard sale.

Note, it’s never in one leap; it’s always a series of steps that someone will need to take.

It’s the value of the content in the video, not the quality of the video, that’s most important.

Taking this person from where they are right now, we’ve moved them one step closer to where they want to go, and throughout this process we’ve increased trust and reduced scepticism.

Throughout this process we’re trying to lower that scepticism whilst simultaneously increasing our status as an authority in this space and building trust, so they believe what we’re saying.

‘Wow, this is just awesome! This person (you) just provided me all this value, and they haven’t even tried to sell me anything. They’re literally just dishing out value, without asking me for anything’.

The way these videos are designed is that 80% is value and content and 20% is a pitch at the end.

Instead of cold-calling or begging your friends and colleagues for referrals, you’ll have people reaching out to you and booking in on your calendar… all robotically and automated!

Remember, you always want to hint in your emails that there’s something else coming. Like, ‘You thought this was great, wait till you see what I’ve got to show you in the next two to three days’. This makes them eager to open up all your emails and see what treasure is inside.

In marketing we’re only ever counting on a very small subset of the market to actually take the desired action we want them to. Whether that’s clicking on an ad, coming through to our landing page and converting into a lead or sale, booking an appointment, or a prospect becoming a paying client. It’s always going to be a small percentage of people who actually do that thing you want them to do.

Because we know in order to get paying clients, we’re going to have to jump onto the phone and speak to people, and we want to make sure that by that point, their scepticism is as low as it can possibly be.

If you’re selling a service, the best way to close the sale is to have a free 30, 45, or 60 minute zero-pressure, very helpful sales conversation.

Phase 7) Sales Conversion

Sell Like A Doctor

You want to have your attachment on an accurate diagnosis of the problem.

That’s what makes a good doctor and it’s what makes a good salesperson. You have all of your attention on the diagnosis, not the prescription. As a salesperson, you’re trying to diagnose someone’s issue and then, if what you’re selling can help them, you make them an irresistible offer – an offer they can’t refuse.

For most of us, it’s very tempting to talk about our services, our coaching, or our expertise, but the problem is this only translates into you talking more about you than about solving their problems. And they didn’t book in this call to hear about how great you are. They booked the call because they have a problem they are motivated to solve. They couldn’t care less about you.

Finding Your Prospect’s ‘Why?’ It’s incredibly important that you find the real reason they booked in this call with you.

‘Hello, Mike. How may I help you?’ And then you shut up and listen.

Dig even deeper by asking opened ended questions:

Where Do They Want To Go? Get your prospect to tell you about where they want to go and their desired outcome.

Get an answer to these questions, let them tell you exactly all the things they’re trying to achieve, and get some specifics before moving forward with the call.

The Admission: This is where you get your prospect to express everything they’ve been doing so far. How they’ve struggled. All their frustrations. Get all their challenges out. What has worked. What hasn’t. And why.

Deliver Value During the Call

After you’ve established the burning problem they’re trying to solve, this is the part of the call where you transition into the value you promised up front in your Godfather Offer. Once we’ve asked all our questions and got all their answers, we simply help them formulate a plan based on their answers. Genius, I know.

The best way to kill this scepticism is to prove to them that you can help them by actually helping them. Remember, no one likes to be sold, but everyone likes to buy. You want to get your prospects excited by solving a part of their problem on the call,

Get creative and think about unique ways you could deliver value and show them live on the call that you can help them by actually helping them.

Prepare & Rehearse the Sales Pitch

This section of the conversation is to simply tell them what you’ve got to offer and what your program can help them achieve. Tailor this to the specific problems they told you they were having earlier in the call and position it as exactly what they need – because it is!

You may have to write out this section of your script because everybody’s service and offer is different. Write it out, read it aloud, and ensure it rolls off the tongue; and then practice saying it over and over again to get the delivery perfect. This is crucial. This overview should be no more than two minutes long.

Be prepared and get used to delivering this overview and applying it specifically to each prospect’s pains, fears, hopes, dreams, and desires to make the prospect feel your offering is exactly the answer they’ve been looking for. Use the same words they use to describe their problems and goals.

Do not harp on about all the technical bells and whistles of your offering. Instead, focus on how it will help them solve the issue or problem they’re looking to solve.

The Close

Based on the prospect’s tone and involvement in the call, you should have a good read if they’re ‘cold’, ‘warm’, or ‘hot’. However, we still want to do a temperature check and test close

State your price and what your services cost. Say it with pride and conviction. Do not hesitate for a second and do not pause to get a confirmation once you state your price.

THEN, YOU DON’T SAY ANOTHER WORD. There’s an old saying in sales: ‘The person who speaks first, loses.’ You’ve stated your offer. Now you must show confidence by waiting for their response.

When selling coaching, consulting, or professional services, it’s important to weed out people quickly if they aren’t going to be a good fit. You do this by using surveys and applications. That way, it frees up more time for you to spend with people who are a good fit and that you can actually help.

When the fate of your business is on the line – which it always is because sales is the oxygen for any business – you need a proven ‘rinse and repeat’ process and script for converting leads into sales. You don’t want to have it all in your head or ‘wing it’. You must have a script that you refine and strengthen over time. Then when you hire people, they can follow your proven script, leaving little to chance.

PHASE 8: Automate And Multiply

Building relationships with email

But what happens to the people who go through our funnel and don’t take the desired action we want them to? Which, I will add, will always be the majority of people, because in marketing, we only ever count on a very small percentage of people actually doing what we want them to do. Do we just accept this and move on to simply just generating more traffic? No! We nurture these people over time. We provide value and build a relationship by using email.

42% of businesses have listed email marketing as the top digital marketing channel for lead generation.

The 3 things that matter in email marketing

When it comes to email, there really are only three things that matter: Get it delivered Get it opened Get it clicked

Step 1: Get It Delivered

It really doesn’t work that way. You have to really work to ensure your emails get delivered. Considering the smart filtering systems of today’s mailboxes and email providers, achieving a high inbox deliverability rate is not easy.

Email deliverability is determined by three things: Sender reputation. Bounce and complaint rates. Recipient engagement.

The very first step to getting your email delivered is to be on a good platform.

If you have a smaller-sized list (sub 10,000) is MailChimp, which has some of the best deliverability in the industry. However, it can prove to be relatively more expensive as your list gets bigger. Some other good platforms are ActiveCampaign, GetResponse, AWeber, and Drip.

Your IP address (the unique string of numbers that identify your computer) has a reputation called a sender score. If you’re like me, your eager little brain is probably saying, I wonder what my sender score is? Well, you can go to www.senderscore.org and find out for yourself.

The single most important strategy for increasing your sender score is by sending more engaging and valuable emails. An easy way to manage this is to make sure two thirds of your emails are content and value, and one third is offers and promos.

Warm Up Your New IP Address After you select which platform is best for you and you’ve got a new IP, it’s important to start sending slowly with a low email volume to establish an IP address reputation.

Plain-text Personal Mails work best

Formatting and Styling: Contrary to popular advice, your email shouldn’t look ‘beautiful’, with heavy images and sexy graphics. Why not?

In the case of email, schmick and sexy doesn’t drive sales. It’s been proven in countless split tests.

Aside from proper list segmentation, nothing boosts opens and clicks as well as an old school, plain-text email.

Logos in the Header: A lot of business owners and even seasoned marketers put their logo at the top of each email, and then have padding around the email with fancy buttons, almost styling it up like a web page. These heavy-weight emails kill your deliverability, because who sends these types of emails? Businesses! This type of email gives a signal to the email providers that this is a promotion, and so they will either stick it in Gmail’s promotions tab or throttle the deliverability.

Switch Up the Sender: Sending out emails from multiple people within your company or organisation improves open rates, and therefore has a cascade effect on sender scores and reputation overall improving your deliverability.

Step 2: Getting It Opened

Your emails should be personal

Think about your email inbox for a moment. When you fire it up for the first time every day, what do you do? Check, check, check, check, check… Delete! You delete everything that appears to be promotional or commercial and that you know is safe to delete.

We first have to make the email look personal. (Or at the very least ensure it doesn’t look commercial.) This starts with the sender’s name and the subject line. Emails that you want to get opened should always come from an email that appears to be personal. That means no ‘sales@letmesellyou.com’.

Typically speaking, when it comes to email, nobody wants to be emailed a commercial message from a business. They only want to hear from their friends.

First up, tone is everything.

Writing for email is different. It’s much more personal and conversational.

Talk to them like a friend: First up, write conversationally and don’t try to sell them straight out of the gate. Great emails feel like a conversation between you and your best friend.

Entertain & Excite your readers

You must entertain, excite, and spark passion in your readers. Be polarising.

And there is only one cure to the money-murdering disease that is email blindness and that is to write emails that entertain, excite and engage your readers. The number one thing I fear when I send out an email is that it will be boring.

But this doesn’t happen by accident. It takes effort, and most people have no idea how to secure this kind of relationship and friend-like bond. The takeaway being, nothing will increase the amount of sales your emails bring in more than writing exciting and entertaining copy that spices up the dull life of your readers.

Subject Line

It’s no secret that one of the primary drivers of email open rates is your subject line. Other than the sender name, it’s the element of an email that usually stands out the most in your reader’s inbox.

Use lower-case or sentence case – not Title Case or, even worse, ALL CAPS. Lack almost all punctuation. Keep it to four or five words, max. Ask questions. Tell you enough to want to open them, but not the whole story.

Intrigue is a proven winner to draw in readers. But when using this style of clickbait-y subject lines, you have to close the loop in the email. The subject line creates burning intrigue and curiosity and the email needs to satisfy it.

Length: For subject lines, from 1 to 20 characters is where the magic happens. Compared with medium-length subject lines (21-60 characters), longer subject lines (61+ characters) have slightly higher average open rates, unique click rates, and click-to-open rates.

Study Competition

Sign up for every email and/or newsletter from people in your industry. See what these people are sending out, how frequently they’re emailing, what their subject lines are, what type of content and CTAs they’re using in their emails.

Then start what’s called an ‘email swipe file’, which I recommend you divide into folders in Gmail, Outlook, or whatever you use. This allows you to take a panoramic view of the market and the landscape you’re fighting for attention in.

Preheader Text That Burns With Intrigue

Preheader text is what I call the ‘sniff test’ used by subscribers as a pre-screening tool along with the subject line, because it’s the second thing a subscriber sees when they get your email.

This means the copy here must be on point. The key with preheader text is not to tell the whole story and to have it burning with intrigue.

Email Timing

The Day: Tuesday: This is hands down the #1 best day to send emails, according to the majority of the data from these studies. Thursday: If you send two emails a week, choose Thursday for your second day.

The Best Time to Send Email: 10 am / 8 pm-midnight / 2 pm / 6 am

Email Recap

Subject line/Preheader: Grabs your reader by the throat and forces them to keep reading. After reading your subject line, their brain should be burning with intrigue to find out more. Lead: Drag them into your copy by captivating them with an interesting statement or ‘pattern interrupt’ that jolts them to attention. Body: Fascinate them with a gripping or unusual story or example. Call To Action: Get them to click, share, buy or do whatever the primary call to action of your email is.

Your Breakthrough Email Checklist: Make sure you use a personal sender name. Send your emails on Tuesdays at 10 am. Make your subject lines are either two to four words or super long in length. Nothing in between. Write preheader text that burns with intrigue Above all, write emails that entertain, excite, and engage your readers. Ask yourself when sending every email: ‘Will this email get into the ‘P’ group or die in the ‘C’ group?’ Make your emails plain text instead of visual masterpieces. Talk to readers as you would your best friend. Make your emails about your readers — not just about yourself. Study the herd and do the opposite. Make it visceral and bring your email copy to life with specifics. Don’t ask them to buy, click or act. Tell them! Conclusion

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