Latest / Imperfect Marketing / Episode 114: Trust-Building Secrets for High Ticket Sales: Expert Insights from Craig Andrews

Transcript

Episode 114: Trust-Building Secrets for High Ticket Sales: Expert Insights from Craig Andrews · Imperfect Marketing

• 0:28
  Speaker 1: Hello everybody and welcome back to another episode of Imperfect Marketing.
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: Today I'm really excited because we have Craig Andrews here and I'm going to read his bio, so bear with me for a second.
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: Craig Andrews is the principal ally and founder of Marketing Agency Allies For Me, using a proven method that mimics the stages of courtship, allies for me helps companies find strangers and convert them into high-paying customers.
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: His expertise is creating irresistible first-time offers that work as coffee dates that accelerate high-ticket sales.
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome, craig, thank you so much for joining me today.
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: Well, kendra, it's a delight to be here, so excited to have our conversation.
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: So I'm really excited to talk to you, because I believe marketing is all about building relationships, And you could and clearly you do liken it to courtship and dating, because that's truly what it is right.
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: Absolutely, absolutely, and it's funny.
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: One of the scenarios that we give is if you imagine somebody walking into a bar, you see somebody on the other side of the bar and you walk up to them and say, hey, you're kind of cute, may have your phone number better, yet, let's just get married.
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: Well, there's a chance you may get the slapped or have the cops called on you or something like that, because that's inappropriate, but for some strange reason and we know it's inappropriate, but for some strange reason when it comes to high-ticket sales, that's exactly what we do.
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: So what do you think is broken?
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: Is it just the introduction when it comes to high-ticket sales?
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: What's the introduction and the speed at which they try to advance the relationship.
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: And I'm going to sound like I'm contradicting myself, because if you introduce this first-time offer, you can actually shorten the time of closing.
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: But we all have people in their lives that they went out, they met somebody, they got married immediately and they've had a marriage that's lasted 20, 30 years, which is wonderful.
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: I celebrate those folks, but that's more the exception, and so when we see that we don't think that's normal And it's not exactly what we would recommend to our own children if they were going out looking for their lifetime spouse, and so if we wouldn't recommend it to our own kids, i don't know if we should recommend it to our sales team or to ourselves if we are the sales team.
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: So You said that a first-time offer can speed up the sales process a little bit.
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: Tell me a little bit more about that.
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and actually you know what?
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: Let me take you back in time about 18 months in my life, because it makes a.
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: It will help explain this.
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: So, 18 months, actually, it was August 10th 2021.
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: I walked into the hospital, into the emergency room, and I walked up to the desk and I said I am having trouble breathing And they took me back immediately, put me on oxygen, you know, and I had COVID And 11 days later they put me on the ventilator and it was lights out for me for six weeks.
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: Now, for the first four weeks, they constantly told my wife he's going to die, he's not going to make it.
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: They believed that so much.
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: They pulled her into a conference room and put my chart up on the wall And the chart said prognosis multiple organ failure leading to death.
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: Now that was credible because I was at that time.
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: I was actually in kidney failure.
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: And then they the next thing they had her do was meet with hospice to plan the day they would pull the plug.
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: And what was really interesting my wife is just incredibly awesome That was back when they weren't let in family in the hospital And she said look, if he's going to die, he's not going to die alone.
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: And she and they were like, well, no, no, no, you can't come in.
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: And she's like, really, i insist.
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: And so they eventually let her in for an hour or day And she came to me And she would sing to me and she would pray over me and she would say words of encouragement.
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: And, you know, six weeks later I wake up and something amazing happened While I was out.
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: My trust in the doctors plummeted, it went through the floor.
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: My trust in my wife went through the roof, all while I was supposedly unconscious.
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: And I was unconscious, but there were messages that came through while you know, in my semi unconscious state And the I say semi because I touched elements of reality in the coma, but technically I was in a coma and it brings out a Maya Angelo quote that says people will forget what you said, they will forget what you did, but they will never forget how you made them feel.
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: And while my wife was speaking words of hope and encouragement, the doctors were saying something much different And it registered.
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: And so it just it's honestly the best thing that ever happened to our marriage.
• 5:38
  Speaker 2: I wish we could have gotten there without all the drama.
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: But that would have been nice right.
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much for sharing that.
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: That's just yeah.
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: Well, and here's where it ties into the whole first time offer is what we found is what they properly structured first time offer.
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: It creates an experience.
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: It creates an opportunity for you to make your prospect feel something, and it's kind of your choice.
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: Are they going to walk away with the feelings that my wife gave me Or are they going to walk away with the feelings the doctors made me feel?
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: And if you choose the path of my wife, which I strongly recommend, the, that's ideal.
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: Right, that's ideal.
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: I'm breathing oxygen today because of her.
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: But if you walk that path, what happens in the process of this first time offer?
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: you're speaking words of hope and life into your prospect.
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: One of the critical elements is you have to solve a problem, small problem, but you have to solve a problem.
• 6:40
  Speaker 2: And when you come shoulder to shoulder with somebody and solve a problem together, the level of trust just goes through the roof.
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: At that point, a lot of the questions that cause hesitation in these high ticket purchases, they just kind of go away.
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: They're like you know what?
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: I trust you, i think you're going to take care of me, you know.
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: And that kind of goes back to when I was in the hospital, when I first started regaining consciousness, my brain was really scrambled.
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: It took me probably about a week and a half My thinking to start to clear up.
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: But the doctors came to me and they said, hey, we want to do this or this or this.
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: And when the doctors were asking, my answer was always no.
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: But when my wife came to me and said, hey, they want you to do this, i would ask her is it safe?
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: And she'd say absolutely.
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: And once I heard her say it was okay, i would do that.
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: And it's kind of that similar level of trust.
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: I mean, that's a deep, deep, deep trust.
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: That can never be accomplished in any sales presentation, you know.
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: The only way is to create that experience.
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no, it's that experience overrides everything else that you know, because people have doubts.
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: You know you're always trying through marketing and communications to build a no like and trust factor.
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: But trust is hard to build.
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: People don't necessarily know whether or not to trust you, and things like that I always think about when I go to try a new software.
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: Right, They might have like a two week free trial.
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: It might not be long enough.
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: Well, I don't usually sign up for the year.
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: I'll sign up for a month to month, even though it's more expensive, because I'm waiting to see.
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: Does it really work like it's supposed to or like I want it to?
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah, No, and that's exactly it.
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: And you know, a year and a half, two years ago it was easy to sell, You know.
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: I mean, if you couldn't sell a couple of years ago, you've got bigger, bigger problems.
• 8:39
  Speaker 2: But now everybody is scared in fear is driving purchasing decisions.
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: It's driving a conservatism from a purchasing political perspective, but purchasing perspective.
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: And if you're doing high ticket offers and, by the way, I had somebody ask me earlier what high ticket was and I said high ticket is in the eye of the person who's writing the check.
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: If it feels high ticket to them, it is high ticket.
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: And when they're getting ready to make that high ticket purchase in this environment, in this economy, they're scared.
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: They're scared and there's a cognitive bias that's hardwired into us that it reads something along the lines to avoid irreversible decisions, We choose not to act, We try to preserve autonomy and group status And that's one of those things that's just paralyzing.
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: And if you talk to anybody that's in high ticket sales these days, they're running into that.
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: So let's talk about a little bit more about a first-time offer.
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: How is, how do you structure that?
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: What is a first-time offer?
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: What are some examples that you could give us so that people listening or watching on YouTube since that's new this season could better understand what it is that you're referring to?
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And let me explain it.
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: Think of it as you know.
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: Imagine we're baking a cake and we have some ingredients for the cake and some ingredients for the icing.
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: So I'm going to break it into those two groups.
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: So the first set of ingredients it has to be an impulse purchase.
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: That means the coins in the cushion and the couch, the money in your wallet or the B2B equivalent of it.
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: If somebody has to ask permission of anyone to spend that money, priced it too high.
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: The next thing is it has to deliver a disproportionate amount of value to price.
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: We usually aim for it in X, So just to wrap some numbers around it, we found that most people with any decision-making authority in an organization can spend $500 without anybody ever holding them accountable.
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: So we try to price our first-time offers at $500, you know, just to remove all the price objections And, more importantly, the accountability.
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: Even more than price, they're worried about spending the money and having it go wrong And somebody say why did you spend this money that way?
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: So if we price it at $500, we want to pack 10 times the value We're aiming at $5,000 worth of value for $500.
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: That's disproportionate.
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: The next thing is it has to solve a problem.
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: And if it doesn't solve a problem then it's not delivering value.
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: Now we have people that will come to us and say what if I do an assessment or an audit or something like that?
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: Well, that highlights the problems they already have.
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: It doesn't actually solve a problem.
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: And I don't know about you, but I found there is a limited list of people in this world that will invite me into their world to critique them, So I tend to avoid those.
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: So it has to solve a problem, But obviously you don't want to solve all their problems.
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: They have no reason to go and buy your core offer, your high ticket offer.
• 11:56
  Speaker 2: So you want to leave some problems unsolved and you want to structure it so it naturally leads into that core offer.
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: So that's the first set of ingredients.
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: Then, when we get into the nuts and bolts of looking at it, we found that you want to have a minimum of three and a maximum of five deliverables that represent three to five milestones that move them three to five steps closer from where they are to where they want to be.
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: One of those milestones should be the product of a co-working session, where they contribute primarily to those deliverables.
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: You want them to feel like the output of that co-working session is more their ideas than your ideas, And the reason for that?
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: it flips a couple more cognitive biases, It hits the IKEA effect and it hits the endowment effect.
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: But the other reason is when you get to the end and you want to move towards implementation, it's going to be harder for them to reject moving forward with their own ideas.
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: And so another thing is you want the final deliverable, and this is going to sound complicated at first.
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: I promise I will immediately simplify it.
• 13:13
  Speaker 2: The final deliverable should solve a problem that is uniquely created by the successful delivery of the preceding deliverables.
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: So that's the complicated version That sounds like my math class or trigonometry or something that I took about derivatives.
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: So, all right, give it to me a little simpler.
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: Here's the simple version.
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: If you buy a boat, you have a new problem You need a place to store it, to dock the boat.
• 13:43
  Speaker 2: So if I were in the business of selling boats and somebody came on to my boatyard, i would say you know what?
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: We're going to find you the perfect boat.
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: But once we find that boat, your next problem is going to be where to dock it.
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: Well, guess what?
• 13:57
  Speaker 2: We have relationships with all the marinas in the area, all the yacht clubs in the area.
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: We know their prices.
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: We will find the perfect place for you.
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: We will make the introductions.
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: As a matter of fact, if you would like, we will have your boat delivered exactly to where you want it.
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: So all you have to do is show up with your family picnic basket cooler in hand, get on the boat and sail in your merry way.
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: Now what that does is that shifts their frame, point their point of reference from considering buying a boat already, mentally picturing themselves enjoying the joys of boathood, and it puts them in a success mindset, puts them forward.
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: And so that's an example where you saw the problem.
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: You know the problem, uniquely created by the pre-seeding deliverable.
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: The pre-seeding deliverable is the boat.
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: Now the new problem is where to dock it, and it's a way of just kind of moving them forward and helping them picture success in their own minds.
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: So let's look at it from a service-based Your coach, a consultant, maybe your marketing person like me.
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: You know, i build a plan for somebody, right?
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: I build them a marketing plan and outline with tactics and things like that.
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: I don't necessarily want to do all their marketing for them, but that sounds to me like that's.
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: Like my next step would be now that I've got a plan.
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: Now they got to do it right, or am I over complicating it?
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: No, no, no.
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: That's a that's an excellent question.
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: The way I would adjust, that is in the marketing plan, i would have you know I would have two to four deliverables of the elements of the marketing plan And then the final deliverable would be a 90-day execution plan Once you have all the things your biggest question is going to be what do I do next?
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: Yep.
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: We're going to help you answer that.
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: I like that.
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: Okay, very cool.
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: So, yeah.
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: So I mean, whether it's a product or a service, there's a way to do this.
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: So that you're salt.
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: You've got to be a little bit creative in what that next step is, depending on what it is that you want to provide to and what you can provide, because I can't.
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: For all the plans that I make, i definitely cannot execute them all Right, not enough hours in the day.
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: So let me throw this out, because this is something you certainly run into And this is another reason why we really believe you should do coffee dates.
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: So if you do marketing, that means you have clients.
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: If you have clients, you've probably had some clients that you wish you did not have And maybe they wish they didn't have you, and so one of the things It's all about fit in my opinion.
• 16:45
  Speaker 2: Exactly, and so one of the reasons you do this whole coffee date is it takes chance.
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: Just like a real coffee date.
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: It's a chance to see are we aligned, you know, are we aligned?
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: And so when we're doing this, i mean we do marketing as well, and when we're doing this and taking some light through one of our first time offers, we're trying to assess things like will they take our advice, are they teachable, are they reasonable?
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: We're just going through.
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: We're also measuring speed.
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: One of our values is decisiveness.
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: If you want to put me in a torture chamber, lock me in a room with somebody who's indecisive.
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: The police will probably be called at some point.
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: It will not be a pretty scene, and so we use this as part of the filter to figure out is this something we're going to work well with?
• 17:36
  Speaker 2: And there are people that take longer to make decisions.
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: That's up to them, that's their business.
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: We're just not the best ones to help them.
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, again, that goes back to fit right, and it really comes down to finding the right fit, because there's a lot of us out there that do similar things For not all the same, even if we do the same things And I think it's important to really realize that there's somebody else out there that's probably a better fit for you.
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: I like that you're saying that, because I think everybody listening needs to know you can say no to clients.
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: I mean, again, we're talking about that fear mentality but you're going to be miserable if you take on the wrong people.
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: I had to end a fairly long-term relationship with a client because they weren't listening to me anymore.
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well, then why am I spending my wheels and spending all this time?
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: And then I was spending extra time trying to convince them that my ideas were correct.
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: They still weren't listening, and so it was like you know what We're not working together well anymore.
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: I'm no longer the right solution for you.
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: Let's finish up the next 30 days and then transition everything over to wherever you'd like it, but this isn't going to work if you're not going to listen to me, right?
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: For either of us Yeah.
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: And it's funny how that goes, how that you mentioned.
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: It was a long-term client.
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: That had to be heartbreaking to see that transition happen.
• 19:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah, let me just share something as a word of encouragement to you.
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: One of my neighbors is one of the most qualified coaches in the game of tennis.
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: He does strategy coaching.
• 19:19
  Speaker 2: He's not the one that will help you on your swing, he's going to help you on your strategy.
• 19:23
  Speaker 2: But his client was Djokovic, who's like the number one, number two tennis player in the world And it's funny and that relationship ended.
• 19:35
  Speaker 2: But sometimes he helps out like talented kids in the area.
• 19:40
  Speaker 2: And he was telling me about one of his clients, one of his students.
• 19:43
  Speaker 2: At some point they just quit taking his advice.
• 19:46
  Speaker 2: Now the student wasn't Djokovic, it wasn't even somebody playing pro.
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: Here's a guy who is you and I could argue well, maybe we're good, maybe there are others.
• 19:57
  Speaker 2: We're talking about a tennis coach that coached the number one player in the world And some punk kid is like yeah, i don't think you're right on this, and he and I have talked about that And he said it's just one of the things that happen.
• 20:11
  Speaker 2: It's probably a testament to you doing your job so well that they think you're doing it And all of a sudden they start devaluing your advice And unfortunately that just seems to be kind of the course, that things go Yeah Well, and I wish I was young again when I knew everything.
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, those were the good old days.
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: A friend of mine, her mom, used to have on the refrigerator a little magnet that said hurry up and move out of your parents' house while you still know everything.
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, i hope that encourages you that if the coach to the number one tennis player in the world can have much lesser players think they know it all.
• 20:59
  Speaker 2: That should hopefully encourage you that that's just the normal course of things.
• 21:03
  Speaker 2: It's not good, but it's just what it is It is, but I think it's important that you have to give yourself permission to say no to fire some clients.
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: Don't come from a place of fear.
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: Again, you're talking about these first time offers because people are a little scared right With the economy and the changes and everything that's going on.
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: They don't want to be called out for making a poor decision And, trust me, there's more work out there.
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: You will find it if you're good and you follow through with what you do.
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: I've already I mean, i replaced all the clients that I got rid of for lack of a better term.
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: I fired them because I wasn't the right solution for them anymore.
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: They got to a different stage.
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: One outgrew me.
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: Their marketing was so good and they were growing so much they needed a full-time person.
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: That's awesome.
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: So, again, there's a lot of evolution that can happen that will allow you to do some different things, and I think it's important to keep that in mind.
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: And I love the fact that you said you're not the right fit, for You know a lot of different people and I think that's good and I think you have to know that.
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 22:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's you know what.
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: It's better for you and it's better for them, it's better for everybody when you identify that early, it's.
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: You know people get married that maybe shouldn't be married and you know My all my hope is always that they persevere in their marriage.
• 22:40
  Speaker 2: There's even some scientific evidence that shows that's the shortest path to happiness.
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: But sometimes it's easier to match up with somebody where there's less change in you and less change to them and Them to get to that happy place.
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, i've loved this.
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: I love the idea of a first-time offer.
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: I love the idea of really building that trust and showing what you can do and the fact that you're a solid investment for them When they go to their, to your big-ticket offers.
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: Again, you know, it varies on the size of the business and the target audience that you're going after as to what that is and You need to really think about it.
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: I have a friend that He always wanted to do like a $5,000 introductory thing before they hired him for other projects and Most of my clients that I would refer him into didn't want to make that investment because they had no idea what Working with him was like.
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: So giving that first-time offer, small ticket, something where there's some skin in the game and you don't have to freebie seekers on everything I think is important to think about and factor in.
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: So I think this has been really, really good.
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much, but before I let you go and we wrap up here, there's a question that I ask all of my guests.
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: This show is called imperfect marketing because marketing is anything But perfect, as we both know.
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: So tell me a little bit about what your biggest marketing lesson learned has been.
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: Well, you know, it's a lesson a little bit embarrassed, to admit, because it's the obvious one I At one point I had allowed too much revenue to come from one client and I felt really secure in that account.
• 24:26
  Speaker 2: It was a very big account But I felt very secure because we tripled their revenue in 18 months and their starting number was not small.
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: You know, their starting number was eight digits and we tripled that in 18 months.
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: And some live in fat, dumb and happy because we've got tons of revenue, got had what I thought was a happy client, and they fired us.
• 24:49
  Speaker 2: And so all of a sudden we had big financial troubles.
• 24:55
  Speaker 2: And what's really interesting is Six months before they fire, or maybe not six, maybe four or five months before they fired us, i'd started working on this whole concept of a first-time offer.
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: I was trying to use it.
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: I was actually trying to work on bringing other you know other folks in and My first try to first time offer failed miserably.
• 25:15
  Speaker 2: Nobody understood it, nobody wanted it, nobody bought it and And the reason you'll get this the reason was I was trying to solve a pain They had, but they didn't know they had.
• 25:26
  Speaker 2: But when, when we got fired, i was like, okay, now it's showtime, it's time to figure this out.
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: And was when we got fired that actually started more Desperately putting together this concept, because you know what I actually really stink at sales I'm a horrible, horrible salesperson and so selling harder was not working, because I think people were just seeing somebody that was kind of desperate and, you know, using some cliche sales playbooks, and that just was not closing deals, and so the biggest lesson was Actually getting it building.
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: You know the original days of starting to put together these first-time offers.
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: It took about 18 months to sort of start getting it to work, and then we've perfected it over the last five years, but it has been a game changer.
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: It has actually changed my marriage.
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: That was, you know, the biggest thing that changed my marriage was my was nearly dying and my wife, you know, working so hard to save my life.
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: Before that you know that we just had some conflict.
• 26:28
  Speaker 2: You know, because when business is tough, that brings conflict into the marriage, you know.
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: And Now when we do these first-time offers, she knows when I have prospecting calls and She'll ask me how the call go and I said, well, they turned down the first-time offer.
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: And she said, well, they're not your customer, then you know it's really helped us align.
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: So not only has it been essential in business, but it's been essential in my marriage.
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: But a lot of imperfection, you know, like said that, first first-time offer, miserable failure.
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: I still think everybody needs it, but they don't care.
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: So I quit trying to push that and we book a lot more business and now, as a result, That's great.
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, i got scared when my largest client was a certain percentage of more than 50% of my revenue And I was like I need to fix this, i need to diversify, and then I went a little bit far And I rained it back in.
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: But you know, again, i think that's a lot of Of what you need to look at.
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: And then you also need to think about where your customers are in the journey, their journey.
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: You know you can't if someone's not aware that they have a problem.
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: It's a lot harder to sell to them than someone that's aware that there's a problem.
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: Right, and I would say 90% of the time they're aware that there's a problem and sometimes it's the wrong problem, but you can fix that because at least they know something's wrong, right, you can steer them in the right direction.
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: It's when they don't know that anything's wrong that you have a problem, right, yeah.
• 27:59
  Speaker 2: Well, and you know and that actually touches on another thing, I'm sure you're familiar with the phrase, you know, offer what they want, deliver what they need Yeah, And not from a precision of bait and switch.
• 28:11
  Speaker 2: You know, fulfill your promises.
• 28:12
  Speaker 2: But what we found is, during first time, offers those things that we know they need, that they don't know they need.
• 28:19
  Speaker 2: We can slip those things in as a part of the delivery process And something magical happens when they see that you're usually the first person bringing it to them And if you deliver it in a way that they find immensely believable, they're like Oh my goodness, And you are now the sole source supplier to fix that need that they're now aware of.
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, i think that that's fantastic.
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: So thank you, craig, so much for joining me today on Imperfect Marketing.
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: I appreciate your time and your insights and discussing a first time offer, because I really think that there's a lot to it that people need to know and understand And you know it could be the what helps you in your business.
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: Now we have a link in the show notes to Craig and some information for you, so if you want to connect with him And then you also have a link for allies, for mecom slash Imperfect Marketing, that will be in the show notes and what's located there, craig.
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: So there they will get two things.
• 29:25
  Speaker 2: They'll get a guide to building a first time offer, So hopefully you can skip some of the many, many mistakes we made figuring this out.
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: And the other thing is we have a course, self paced course.
• 29:37
  Speaker 2: You get 23 days access to that.
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: Now, we're not trying to be stingy.
• 29:43
  Speaker 2: The reason we limit it to 23 days is I've signed up for courses where that's my gave me for free.
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: They've sat in my catalog.
• 29:51
  Speaker 2: I've never taken them out.
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: They've never changed my life.
• 29:54
  Speaker 2: We're in the business of changing lives And we know that if we put a deadline on there, people will go and use it.
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: We actually see it in the analytics, And so we really want this to impact you.
• 30:07
  Speaker 2: So that's why we put the 23 day limit on it.
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: Oh, that's great, okay, so definitely go check that out.
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: Alliesformecom slash Imperfect Marketing all lowercase Again.
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: We'll have a link to it in the show notes, so you'll definitely want to check that out And if you learned anything here today, wherever you're listening or watching, if you're on YouTube, itunes, google podcasts, spotify, wherever you happen to be it would be awesome if you would rate and subscribe.
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: We'd really appreciate it.
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: It really helps us out and lets us know that you're listening and that we're doing a good job for you.
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: So I hope that you can find it in your time to do that for us And in the meantime, have a great rest of your day.
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: I hope to see you on another episode of Imperfect Marketing.
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: Have a great day.