Podcasts about funnel radio

In this episode Susan and Laura cover four actionable items to change patterns, versus changing habits. What can you control? Here are four ideas to take control and gain an edge in business and life. This was taken from a recent blog post by today's guest, Laura Patterson, President, VisionEdge Marketing. She and Susan drive through this hard truth list. You either embrace it and expand your effectiveness, or freeze in place with no desire to change your approach. If that's you, you can now choose to mix it up, or be left behind. ----more---- "The greatest teacher, failure is." - Yoda Be Proactive. Participants register for a race. In triathlons, the registration list and course are published in advance of race day. This allows competitors to research the race and the performance of other participants.  We can also read about the course from previous race participants. Most competitors check out the course prior to the race. The pre-race research provides an opportunity to be proactive rather than reactive on race day. It's vital for business leaders to make conducting research a habit. (Read the rest in the post.) Plan to Win. Two contemporaries from the 20th century offer good advice when it comes to planning. “Plans are nothing, planning is everything” attributed to Dwight Eisenhower, and “failing to plan is planning to fail” attributed to Winston Churchill.  It's easy for business leaders to get sucked into the vortex of the day-to-day. Lack of strategy and a plan is the equivalent of ‘winging it'. If you don't currently have a cadence for business strategy and planning, now is the time to create one. Start by analyzing current performance and identifying why things play out the way they do.  This provides insight into your current patterns and an opportunity to analyze which ones are working, which ones aren't and what adjustments are needed. (Read the rest in the post.) Work the Scenarios. In triathlons unexpected things can happen – tires go flat, people crash, goggles can get kicked off during a swim. Scenarios help you consider possibilities and anticipate what might happen in your market and moves by your customers, competitors or partners. (Read the rest in the post.) Train and practice. Successful triathletes like most competitors train and practice off and during race season – daily – except for a few days before the race. They leverage coaches and refine processes, such as processes associated with transitions and changing flats.  Serious competitors consistently look for opportunities to improve their physical performance as well as address equipment that might give them an edge.  They practice and train with new equipment. Experienced racers know better than to run in new shoes or ride a new bike for the first time at a race.  And they have training partners. (Read the rest in the post.) Here is the post that inspired this episode: https://visionedgemarketing.com/growing-your-business-takes-breaking-patterns/  Here is the episode Laura and Susan were talking about on Market Dominance Guys: Not Getting Trained? Train Yourself! Flip the Script by Oren Klaff goes along perfectly with this episode: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07MPTXZ59/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i1 Laura Patterson's book: Fast Track Your Business - Customer-Centric Accelerate https://www.amazon.com/Fast-Track-Your-Business-Customer-Centric-Accelerate-ebook/dp/B084CTKN6P  ----more---- Here is the full transcript for this episode: Susan Finch (00:14): Hey everybody. Susan Finch here, your host today for Sales Lead Management Radio. And I am really excited because I'm welcoming back a friend of Funnel Radio, a friend of Funnel Media Group, Laura Patterson, from VisionEdge Marketing. Laura had her own show with us. She does her own show now, because we taught you so much, huh? And now you've got to do it on your own. But I want to first before, Laura, I get you going, what prompted this... I know this sounds super old-fashioned, folks, but she sent me an email, and it prompted me to pick up the phone and spontaneously not schedule anything and just talk to her. I know these are radical ideas, and we forget how easy it can be to get a conversation. Because now look at less than 24 hours later, we're doing this interview in this podcast. So Laura, welcome. I am so happy to have this time with you and thank you. Laura Patterson (01:12): Oh, thank you, Susan. I enjoy talking with you and I appreciate the opportunity to be back. And I hope that this conversation will be helpful to all the people who are listening. Susan Finch (01:24): Well, you've been busy, since we last have had a lot of time together. Tell me about your book first. Let's give a plug for the book. Laura Patterson (01:32): Okay. Thank you for that. In fact, the last time we talked was right after the book came out. So that's been quite a while. The book, Fast-Track Your Business: A Customer-Centric Approach to Accelerating Market Growth, has been doing great. And I'm going to say how much I appreciate the people who have taken the time to do reviews. We have had some amazing reviews. Not all of them are on Amazon. All of them are on our website, reviews on LinkedIn, reviews on the site. I just am so grateful for people who have taken the time to let us know how much they find the book to be useful. And that was its intention to give people really practical things they can do. That's one of my personal philosophies is give people something that is actionable for them. Right? Susan Finch (02:21): Right. Laura Patterson (02:22): Philosophy's great. Ideology is great. But we're all busy. We need to be able to make things better. And so we have to give people things to do that. Susan Finch (02:31): Right. And your email tactic that I've come to admire and appreciate... And I will say it and you can correct me if I'm wrong. It's a mass email that is totally personalized. And so it goes- Laura Patterson (02:46): It's a chain. Susan Finch (02:48): A lot of them go to your list. And the only reason why I know is because I have two emails that each get one. Laura Patterson (02:53): Yes. Susan Finch (02:54): Otherwise, I would've never known. Laura Patterson (02:55): It depends. Susan Finch (02:55): Right. Laura Patterson (02:56): Right. Susan Finch (02:56): Okay. It depends. Laura Patterson (02:57): So the email that I sent that prompted this conversation did not go through a list. Susan Finch (03:02): No. Laura Patterson (03:03): That was a personal email to you. Susan Finch (03:05): And those on the site too, I could tell by the top. I could tell by the greeting, but there are other ones that are not, yet they have the warm feeling that I matter, that I'm on your list feeling. And I appreciate that. Even knowing that I'm not the only one who got it, it's like, "I like being on this list. I like what you send." And it's usually, it's never asking for anything from me. It's always given me something. And you were one of the most sincere people I know- Laura Patterson (03:39): Thank you. Susan Finch (03:40): That does this, your thoughtful interaction with me and engagement on social, the way you talk about others. And it's why I've always enjoyed working with you. So I wanted to say that publicly. I endorse what you do, what VisionEdge Marketing does. I think you provide so much in the way of valuable insights and sincere championing of your clients, with no ego ever. Laura Patterson (04:09): Yeah. Well, you can't get through graduate school and have an ego. But I left that around a long, long time ago. I was talking to a colleague and he was so kind to say so. I write all of our stuff, and so if you don't like it or you do like it, it's me doing it. So you can take it up with me. I have wonderful folks who help me package it up, because that's not my area of expertise. But our content, our emails, our videos, I'm writing that. That is my heart. And I care about the people that are in our community. And I actually think of the people. I don't think of it as a list. I actually do think of it as our community. Laura Patterson (04:56): And we are selective about our community. Not just anybody. We don't just want anybody in our community. We want people that will benefit from what we have to say, and we'll share. We'll share. We want it to be an opportunity. I don't know. I've been at this a long time. You've been at this a long time, but that doesn't mean I know everything. Of course not. I'm still learning every day. And I think that's one of the things we're going to talk about. And I loved your episode that, if you're not getting what you need in the company that you're in, it's okay to take your own initiative and go learn. We should all be learning every day. Learn something. Go learn things. Susan Finch (05:37): Thank you. That was a really fun episode I did with Corey Frank from Market Dominance Guys. Corey Frank is from Uncommon Pro and from Branch 49.com. I love his energy. Since getting tangled up with Chris and Corey, I am constantly inspired and lifted up and introduced to some of the go-getters, which is what you and I were talking about surrounding ourselves with yesterday. As far as taking this initiative, I don't want this to turn into another, "Oh, the young adults today and the under-30s today do blah, blah, blah." And I didn't want to get into that. What I want to talk about though, is what we can do and make some great suggestions. Susan Finch (06:20): And your posts about the Four Patterns to Support Growth and Improve Performance, I wanted to start with that and then mix it up with some of what we know and some great ideas. I have to give a shout-out to that whole ConnectAndSell community and the offshoots, including the Oren Klaffs, Jeb Blounts, and all of those guys. Oh, my gosh. They wear me out in the best way. I am constantly being challenged to show up to things, give feedback on things and learn from my peers, from my competitors, from my associates, in different avenues and different arenas and industries. I really love how I end my day. I am lifted up every day and re-energized. Laura Patterson (07:11): That's a really important point about the people that we hang out with. The people that we hang out with, we can't choose everybody that we hang out with. We have jobs to do. But I have to say that in the 22 years plus that I've been in VisionEdge Marketing and in my entire career, which is decades, I have been really fortunate. Most of the people that I have interacted with have been inspiring, motivating, smart. I've enjoyed them and I stayed in touch with many of them, even if we're not still working together because they're cool people. And I think that's all of us need to remember that we choose the people. Maybe we don't get to choose who our parents are. We don't get to choose who our siblings are. Laura Patterson (07:57): We do have some impact on the children that we have, right? That is part of our job as parents. But the rest of it is all about choices. And that takes us to the post. But I do also want to comment on your episode. I agree. It was great energy, really good tips. And if people haven't had a chance to listen to that, when I hope they will. And if they did, I hope to go back because there were really... It was chock-full of really cool things. Laura Patterson (08:23): But that takes us to this conversation, right? We have a series of content, different types of content, and we have our regular blog like everybody else does. And we have a video series, which is really fun that Diana and I do called One Good Idea. And it's actually based on conversations we have with people where we give away one good idea. Then what we do, being the data people that we are, we look and see if there are some conversations that tend to be over and over and over again, sort of consistent themes. And we're like, "Oh. There's something we've been talking about a lot lately, probably is worthy of sharing with others. Let's see if we can take some of those suggestions and turn them into One Good Idea." Laura Patterson (09:09): So we had these One Good Idea videos, and those were fun. And then we have what I sent you yesterday. For the last few years, we've been doing this podcast series called What's Your Edge? And What's Your Edge actually came as a request from members of our community and customers. So I want to give you a little history of that so people, when they go, if they do go and listen to them, they'll understand like, "These are kind of weird." Laura Patterson (09:33): So I believe that stories and metaphors are very helpful in conveying ideas, just a personal philosophy. Not everybody maybe agrees with that. And so several people would say to me, "I really loved that story that you did on X. I really love that metaphor you used. Where is it? Where can I find that so I can share that with my team?" Well, they weren't anywhere. And so what came out of that was, "Why don't you take some of those stories and metaphors and make a podcast series?" So What's Your Edge podcasts really either leverage a story or an experience or metaphor to help get an idea across. And so yesterday's podcast, or the other most recent podcasts, because I don't know when this will come out. So it might not be yesterdays, which is on the patterns, in order to grow, you might have to break some patterns. Laura Patterson (10:28): I'm actually talking about swimming as the metaphor and that to get better at swimming, I had to break some important patterns that had become comfortable and that it was a struggle to do so. And that there are things that all of us, we all have patterns in our lives and in our businesses and the way that we do things. And recognizing that we have a pattern and then assessing whether or not it needs to change, and then what can we do to change it? It doesn't do any good to tell someone they have to change a pattern if we don't tell them some ways that we can do that. And so that was the inspiration for yesterday, the posts on patterns. Susan Finch (11:07): It's a word you're using. You're using patterns where many people would mix that up with habits. They're interchangeable to a degree, but I think the pattern usage makes it more actionable. Laura Patterson (11:23): Yes. Susan Finch (11:24): I think we see habits as a weakness, as a rut, as different things. But a pattern has to me a more positive, some way to improve, some way to change, and to embrace it, rather than looking for a way to discard something. We always talk... Because you rarely talk about good habits. Sometimes you do. Habits of highly effective people, we've heard all those. But patterns is different. To me, it's more that you're actually really digging into it and looking for what's happening. Not just, it's a blunt thing, because a pattern is more than one piece in the making. It's more than one step in the making. It's not just one thing like a habit. Laura Patterson (12:11): I agree. Susan Finch (12:11): People smoke. That's a habit. So that is the difference. And I really wanted to distinguish that word usage. Laura Patterson (12:19): Okay. You brought up smoking. I don't want to spend too much time on smoking. I don't think that's one where we want to go with this conversation, but I think you're bringing up a really good example. Smoking is a habit, but the things that trigger and where things go with smoking are patterns. Susan Finch (12:36): There we go. Laura Patterson (12:37): So if we think about it, when you start analyzing, so we're back to data. This is all really going back to data and analytics and getting insight. And you say, "Aha. When I go out and I'm in a bar and I'm drinking, I tend to smoke." There is a pattern there, right? And so now we're looking at that pattern and we're thinking, "Okay. If I really want to change the habit of smoking, what are some patterns that I need to change potentially or break that will enable me to address the habit?" Does that make sense? Susan Finch (13:15): It does. And it also... We're going to get into this. It is about a plan because maybe I still want to go to bars and I still want to go out, but maybe I'm going to be more aware. Laura Patterson (13:27): Yes. Susan Finch (13:28): And for the ultimate goal, just that last thing, I'm going to shift it and not do that. And instead, do this. Laura Patterson (13:36): Yes. Susan Finch (13:36): And part of it's still great. And part of it's still fun. Laura Patterson (13:39): Exactly. Susan Finch (13:40): But it's that last fork in the road to do good, to not do good, to do positive, to do negative. Where am I going to choose to branch off and make that next choice? Laura Patterson (13:54): So back to data again, the answer of my fallback position, because that's where I'm comfortable. Susan Finch (14:00): That's what you do. Laura Patterson (14:01): And that's what I do and that's where I'm comfortable. And the analysis of data, the purpose of data, and the analysis of data is to get an insight, an actionable insight, that will allow you to make a decision, right? So that's really what we want to empower people to do with patterns is to be able to make a decision and you may choose A over B. We're not evaluating your decision. It's just that you now have the insight that "Oh. This is when this happens, this happens," right? You're beginning to see that. And now you can make better or different decisions. And to your point, choices, but still a decision, right? Laura Patterson (14:42): So understanding what are the patterns and how they affect what you're doing, whether that's a pattern that you're doing in marketing, a pattern that you're doing in sales and the way that you interact with customers or prospects, or a pattern on the way that you lead your company and interact with your employees, or whatever those patterns might be. Then if you don't have the data and analyze those patterns, then you won't be able to really understand how to make the changes. Even though you might recognize something like, "Smoking's not good for me." You don't know how to necessarily do anything about it. Just being told, 'Stop smoking," probably isn't going to be very helpful. Susan Finch (15:31): Right. So you in your recent posts, and I like the snack size of your podcast. We have eight to 10 minutes and it's a nice size. It's like, "Oh. I'm between meetings, I can do this. I can take that one. I can listen to that." Laura Patterson (15:46): Yes. Susan Finch (15:47): And so I want to get back through to these four patterns of support steps, and tackle each one to give everybody an actionable takeaway from here that let's start looking at these things, guys, what can you do? What can you control? Rather than waiting for somebody to do it for you, to hand you the playbook, to say, "I need you to do these five things right now." And so many times people don't even question. It's like, "Okay. I got to do that," or, "Forget it. I don't want to do it." Let's talk about some of the reasoning behind it. And we're going to start with each of these four items. I'm going to toss the ball to you. The first one you list is Being Proactive. Laura Patterson (16:25): Yes. So this plays off your previous episode or the episode we were talking about. We have to take ownership. We have to own our patterns, so we have to own our choices. And to do that, we have to be proactive. I mentioned to you, and I've told you this before, and we're from a similar era. So what I'm about to say probably will resonate with you. It may not resonate with many of your younger listeners, right? Susan Finch (16:55): Yep. Okay. Laura Patterson (16:56): Right. But that's okay. If it doesn't, that's okay. So I grew up in the old saying... You will know what this means. They may not. From the other side of the tracks, right? And my parents were blue-collar workers. They both worked. My mother was a nurse. She worked nights and weekends. My father went to a job. We had a single car. So just to give people some context of what life was like, and they came from hard times. My parents did not have easy lives, but they were very, very grateful for what they did have. They were very, very proud of the fact that they could put food on the table every single day, because that wasn't always true from where they came from. So just giving listeners context. Laura Patterson (17:41): So my parents had five mantras, and this is going to tie into these patterns, that they would use with their children, me and my siblings. One is, life is hard. And, of course, that came from their context. Life is hard. And their lives were hard. Two, life is not fair. Three, nothing is free. Four, you're not entitled to anything. And five, you're not special. This was their way of managing, their way. Laura Patterson (18:15): Now some younger listeners might be thinking, "Oh, my God. How horrible, how harsh, how terrible, how mean." Maybe, I'm not going to judge that. That's where they... But what I think they were really trying to do is remind us that no one's going to give you anything. You're going to have to take initiative. You are responsible. You must be in charge. You must be in control of what happens. Nothing is going to be brought to you on a silver platter and handed to you, was their message in these five things. And it's not going to be fair. Some people are going to get things that you don't get. This is just the way life. Get on with it. Go do what you need to do. It was really about that. Laura Patterson (19:01): And so back to the post, that was what drove that be proactive. We have to take ownership and the initiative if we want something to change if we want to change a pattern. It's not going to change if we don't put the work in. That's where the swimming metaphor comes in. If I didn't put the work in, and it was really, really hard, I was going to continue to revert to the pattern that I was most comfortable with, but that would not get me the result that I wanted. So if you want a different result, more than likely, you're going to have to do something different. And only we, only we can make that happen. Do something different. And we need to be proactive about it. Did I answer that question? Susan Finch (19:43): Oh, you did. That was perfect to cover that. Yes, we are from a similar background. I was not on the wrong side of the tracks. I was on the suburbia. My dad worked. He put food on the table for six of us. My mom stayed home and it was tight. And we had hand-me-downs. We had thrift stores. We did what we could. We had really weird food sometimes. And it was very... I mean pancakes and eggs were dinner as well, because that's what we could afford. Things mixed in Campbell's soup and jello, that's where most of our recipes came from. Laura Patterson (20:23): Yes, exactly. Susan Finch (20:25): And- Laura Patterson (20:26): Totally get that. But at the same time that we grew up with that... It sounds like we had a similar experience. We were being encouraged- Susan Finch (20:37): Oh, gosh. Yes. Laura Patterson (20:37): To do better. Do better, right? You not only to do better and to excel, but what can you do to do better? Which was really the second pattern, Plan to win. Susan Finch (20:50): Yes. Laura Patterson (20:50): Right? It's okay to fail. Was it Yoda in one of the Star Wars movies that said something about failure being for learning or something like. Go look that up. You got to get that quote right. I think it was a Yoda quote. Any way that we... Failure is where we learn. So it's perfectly okay. And we need to encourage people to fail and not always have a safety net, because if we always have a safety net and we never experienced failure, that's a lost opportunity. Susan Finch (21:22): I grew up with five older siblings, by quite a few years. So we range in age. There's a 15-year difference between me and my eldest brother, and eight years with my youngest brother. And so I had many- Laura Patterson (21:36): They wanted a girl. Susan Finch (21:37): They really did. I have one sister, but she's older. The interesting thing though is not only plan to win, yes, but I was also raised by them because my parents did their best and it was always tight and we did not... And they were older by the time I came along, it was never burdening our parents with the mess you create. Laura Patterson (22:04): Exactly. Susan Finch (22:04): And when I did mess up, my parents never knew about it, because I had to clean up my own messes without help from anybody. Get myself out of jams. Figure it out and protect the parents from the pain that some of my bad decisions resulted in. So I always was taught to take personal responsibility for every action or inaction that I made the decision to do or not do. Laura Patterson (22:36): Yes. And I think that is an important message about being back to owning it. Have personal responsibility. Solve the problem. Don't create a problem. But the second pattern really is about planning to win. And this is a business message. Yes, we all need to plan to win personally, whatever that looks like. But since this post is really for people in business and our market is B2B. This is his need to plan to win. That doesn't mean you won't fail along the way. It's okay. But plan to win. And what does that look like? And think about all the various scenarios that might happen, that might thwart your opportunity to win. Susan Finch (23:17): This has been Susan Finch with Sales Lead Management Radio. And we took this in so many directions, we're going to be splitting this into two episodes. So don't miss the second half of my interview with Laura Patterson, where we're going to continue our conversation about the four ways to break and shake up your patterns. You're going to want to hear the conclusion. Susan Finch (23:44): Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Sales Lead Management Radio. You can find us on all your favorite podcast apps. Just look for Sales Lead Management Radio, and you will see us. Subscribe at our site, salesleadmgmt.com. So you never miss an episode, subscribe via email. Review us, rate us, share this episode. Maybe there was something in here that can help you or someone you know. We look forward to having you join us for our next episode. Thank you so much.

How do you improve your cold calling skills if your present company isn't providing any sales training? Train yourself! Until you can get with the right company, borrow ideas from the best sales experts you can find (many have been guests on this podcast), take improv classes, join Toastmasters, and keep your mind open to absorb what works. Our Market Dominance Guy Corey Frank is talking in more depth about training yourself during this second part of his conversation with Susan Finch, president of Funnel Media and Funnel Radio. He advises listeners that salespeople should fall in love with their craft — not the product they're selling. How do you do that? Care about the potential value of the meeting for your prospect and remember the “why” of what you're doing. And what skills should you hone? Learn what moves prospects to make a decision, create a well-written script and adhere exactly to it, use the tone of voice that elicits the response you want, and most importantly, leave your own mood and ego behind when you make a cold call. Train yourself to remember that it's not about you. When you place a call, it's showtime! Listen to the first half of this interview here: Are You Laying Brick, or Making $12 an Hour?

I have been interviewed by Click Funnels Radio. It is one of my dreams to be a guest on this podcast. We do have a very special guest that appeared at the end so make sure that you watch the full interview! And stay tuned tomorrow, because I will announce what happened on the call! Sit back, relax, and enjoy the show! JOIN MY FREE CHALLENGE HERE >>> https://www.Kristamashore.com/clientconversion?sl=podcast JOIN MY NEXT 20 HOUR COACHING SESSION HERE >>>> https://www.kristamashore.com/2dayslive?sl=podcast

When we’re performing in the presence of someone we know to be more expert than we are, our performance usually suffers. In the world of sales, managers often put this pressure on salespeople, although often unwittingly. They may approach their sales rep with every intention of being a helpful coach, but too often they slip into the role of a critical evaluator instead. And as soon as a salesperson thinks they’re being evaluated, fear sets in — their stomach sinks, their voice tightens up, their intended flow of words gets backed up — and there goes their normal, relaxed performance.In this podcast, Chris talks with Susan Finch, president of Funnel Radio, on this topic and then segues into the benefits of how a mutually beneficial relationship between members of the company’s team (sales, research, engineering/manufacturing, customer support) creates the best possible means of serving customers. Chris and Susan then discuss how showing appreciation and respect for the behind-the-scenes team members keeps those people from feeling invisible, motivates them to perform better, and to willingly offer support to the people on the front line.Join Chris and Susan for another relaxed, entertaining, and informative Market Dominance Guys podcast as they explore what works and what doesn’t when managing salespeople and dominating your market. 

The pandemic has certainly shown the general public that scarcity or abundance of productscan have an effect on people’s emotions. Scarcity increases desire — whether you desperatelyneed the product or not. Abundance decreases desire, because there’s plenty of what youmight need in the future. This is true for the sales process too. When you know that you’regoing to have another conversation with a prospect, then you can relax during the initialconversation. The tension will disappear from your voice, because you’re not pushing for thesale: you know you have another chance at a future date, and you can relax while you gatherinformation and begin establishing trust with your prospect. There’s no need to hang on anddesperately keep the call going; you set up an appointment for the next conversation, and thenyou end the call. In other words, you “make yourself scarce.” And right there, you’veintroduced the element of scarcity to your prospect’s emotions and, in doing so, increased theirdesire for more information about what your company offers.Join Chris and Susan Finch of Funnel Radio as they explore this yin-yang of scarcity andabundance, and then let you in on the biggest sin in sales. You won’t want to miss this! This episode of Market Dominance Guys is brought to you by ConnectAndSellConnectAndSell allows your sales reps to talk to more decision-makers in 90 minutes than they would in a week or more of conventional dialing. Your reps can finally be 100% focused on selling, even when working 100% from home since all of their CRM data entry and follow-up scheduling is fully automated within ConnectAndSell’s powerful platform. Your team’s effectiveness will skyrocket by using ConnectAndSell’s teleprompter capability as they’ll know exactly what to say during critical conversations. Visit, ConnectAndSell.com where conversations matter.

  Susan Finch gives agents practical tips regarding video, online meetings, and how to keep from making a fool of yourself when you meet prospects virtually. From how to stand for a headshot, your HD face, warnings about automatic transcripts, video editing tips that no one talks about.   Susan also covers equipment tips, online meeting tips, and enough suggestions to make your head explode. Grab what you can from here, there are dozens of practical and humorous tips. ----more---- Get to know Susan better through her classes she teaches on DMANC.org, Funnel Radio and her own website, susanfinch.com

Marketers crave content, they are desperate for content, sometimes too desperate.  For this episode, the Behind the Mic Guys talk about why podcasts are the largest available source of content.  This podcast is for anyone that wants to offer insincere, storytelling, testimonial building, brand building, authentic content that can be used in 16 ways.  Behind the Mic's Podcast Guys Jim Obermayer is the founder of the Funnel Media Group which produces internet radio and podcasting programs for thirteen companies.  FMG has reached half a million listeners since its inception. Paul Roberts, founder and station manager of OC Talk Radio, the powerhouse internet radio and podcasting channel for Southern, California with over one million listeners a year. Read the Transcript (Literal).  You can use quotes but please attribute it correctly to the podcast. ----more---- Introduction:                   You're listening to Behind the Mic on the Funnel Radio Channel. Listen as Paul Roberts, Susan Finch, and Jim Obermayer talk B2B podcasting tips for companies, speakers, authors, marketing teams, and the C suite. Jim Obermayer:              Welcome to Behind The Mic. Today, we have me and Paul Roberts. To remind everyone, Paul Roberts produces all the programs in the Funnel Radio Channel. And on top of it, he has OC Talk Radio. That goes out to about 3 million people a year in Orange County, California, and a much broader audience. He has over 1 million downloads a year with all of his programs, including Funnel Radio, with the Santa Claus beard. Paul Roberts:                   Yeah, right. My Lincoln beard. That's trying to ... Abraham Lincoln famously grew a beard when a little girl wrote him a letter and said, "You don't look very good. I think you'd look better if you cover up your face." So I think that same applies to me here. Jim Obermayer:              We're going to talk about the many uses for podcasts from talk radio, to sales, marketing, HR, and customer service. There are long-term podcasts and short-term podcasts. There are over a million podcasts in the US now being offered, over a million. That's a big, big- Paul Roberts:                   Big jump from when you and I started. It was a quarter that five, six, seven years ago, there were only 250,000 podcasts. People were still trying to figure this thing out. Jim Obermayer:              And 29 million podcast episodes, so it's a substantial number, but you and I have found through the years that there are many types of podcasts. Why don't you take off here and talk to us about the many, many kinds of podcasts in both B2B and consumer? Paul Roberts:                   Well, let's start with an understanding. This is a new medium, and that I say that, it seems obvious, but it wasn't obvious to me when I started. I'd been in real radio 100 years ago, WMYKK 94, and thought this was just recorded radio.                                            This was something that we, like a radio show, you had a guest, you talked about a topic. The revolution was that was recorded and there were places storing these things you could do it. Webinars have been around as long or longer than podcasts, but there is no central repository for all the webinars taking place today. I don't know that you did a webinar unless you send me an invitation or you have it on your website, but I can go look up the podcast that you recorded today on iTunes, on Google, and a dozen other places, Stitcher, Spreaker, SoundCloud, and even places like iHeart that really were originally just for radio and music. Now they're collecting podcasts. Even Sirius XM is getting serious about podcasts. That's been the revolution in my understanding, that it's not just recorded radio. It's not just radio on demand.                                            It really opens up a whole world of things. For example, we know there's millions of storytelling podcasts out there. That's not something we heard on radio since the 20s, these serialized stories like serial the murder, did he really do it or didn't he? Each and every week we take a dive into this. The Great American Life, all the NPR shows are so popular. Comedy, I don't hear much comedy on radio anymore here, but there's tons of comedy. Politics, of course, all these different sorts of topics.                                            But types of shows, let's talk about internal versus external. There are a lot of people doing internal only podcasts. Cox Communication has one here in Orange County. They do a show. I don't produce it, but they do a show on meet our leaders and they get them to tell funny stories, insightful stories, tender touching stories so that you can actually feel like you get to know the people who run this company. They want to be a family, but it's an international organization spread out over multiple States, multiple countries. They don't have an opportunity to meet people. As we realize this is a new medium, we're finding new uses for it every day. Jim Obermayer:              Well, one of the things that attracted me to your platform, Paul, 11 years ago, pushing 12 now, was that it is a show that is broadcast live at a certain time every week. That's how we started SLMA, which has 556 episodes as of today, 117,000 listeners give or take a few. It started as that, certainly live program with the podcast replays. Most podcasts, they do it whenever they feel like it and it's in the garage or it's in the company studio, and they post it, but it's not live. Tell us a little bit about live versus podcasts that just podcasts, not a live venue, then the recorded podcasts. Paul Roberts:                   Having come out of real radio 8 years ago and discovering podcasting, I thought, "Well, on the surface is kind of like what we did. It's a half hour program, there's an interview. It's kind of like talk radio. What if we really did it live?" And everybody said, "Well, that's not what podcasting is. Podcasting is recorded and on demand." I said, "Well, you can still have that component, but what if you add a live component to it? What if you created a station where the Huffington Post, where we collect all these podcasts and we stream them live first and then turn them into a podcast. What does that do?" One, it finds an extra audience. I don't know why, but there are certain group of people that want to listen to things live. There's an urgency. As Mark Zuckerberg always says about Facebook, "You can see what my cat's doing anytime, but here's what my cat's doing right now."                                            So this creates an urgency to listen, an urgency to participate right now. The second thing is it does, and I think this may be the most important thing, is it changes the whole perception of it. You want to be in my podcast? It's in your bedroom. I don't know when it's going to come out. Okay. But it doesn't sound real important. You want to be on a radio show, that means it's a collection of shows all being live that somehow has built up an audience for that station. Don't listen to just one show, they listen to multiple, and it's live.                                            And the real thing that changes, it's how the guest reacts. If the guest comes on your podcast and you can start and stop and fix it up, there's not much pressure, but if it's live and it's going out to a certain number of people, it creates a whole different kind of conversation I think. And particularly in the guest's mind the importance of doing this, because they've told their friends and family and coworkers to listen. They're not sure how many listening, but they know some people who are listening and they will run red lights to get here.                                            When it's just a recording, "I'm busy," they cancel all the time. It's just a recording session, book another one. So it changes the perceived importance and it changes their whole reaction to it. If part of what you're doing is trying to get big people to come on that you want to meet and start a conversation with and get to know, what a powerful way to do it if you do it live. Much more powerful than if you just recorded. Jim Obermayer:              We found that to be true on the Funnel Radio Channel. When we talk about the kinds of podcasting, I guess it goes back to the reasons of why people do podcasts. Some people, granted, love to have a podcast that increases their brand and their thought leadership in the industry. Paul Roberts:                   Exactly, look at who I know and look at what I know. Jim Obermayer:              And they have their guests on and the guests help that. Those were very often talk radio type podcasts. Now you talked about one of the big telephone companies that has a podcast. Well, I know companies that the HR department has a podcast and it's private just for their employees. Paul Roberts:                   Exactly, like Cox does. I was actually on a panel with them here at the American Marketing Association. That's where I got to know they were doing this. And they said, "We just bought the gear and we started doing this, and we didn't know anything about it, but we wanted to create a connection. We wanted to create a conversation. We really wanted people to get to know the executives in this company. So how could we do that? Everybody can't come in and meet them. We put them up on stage and they don't really feel like they know them. What can we do where they feel like they have an intimate connection with them?" And the podcast was a powerful way to do it. And they've tracked their employee engagement and all these other things, it's gone through the roof. People suddenly feel like, "I know these CEOs and executives, and I feel more connected to them." Jim Obermayer:              Which means that sales people, sales managers, can do private podcast to train their people on new markets, new products, marketing people can do a series of podcasts every time they do a product introduction. Paul Roberts:                   Yeah. Right. It all goes back to the way we see the world and interact with the world. I don't read as much as I used to, I'm sorry to say. I listen or I watch. Even books, I listen to them now rather than read them in the car because we've moved to a mobile smartphone society and on that three inch screen it's harder to read than it is to listen or watch. That device was really designed to talk originally and to communicate. Now it's also watching because it's on all the time.                                            I don't know that we've adapted our marketing to fit that new medium. If that's where everybody's getting their information, if that's where they're learning about you and learning and downloading your information and doing their due diligence, if that's how they're getting to know you, then you've got to change all of your communication to be verbal or visual, and I think we're still living in a written world where we run, write pages and pages and pages of stuff. Maybe that's later where you give me the in depth info, but in the beginning, just talk to me and either show me, or tell me what you want me to know. Jim Obermayer:              Or shows on the Funnel Radio Channel are indicative of what's going on out there to a great extent in B2B. We've got INSIDE Inside Sales, Darryl Praill. He's got probably an average of 5,000 to 6,000 listeners a month. It's just for inside, inside sales. Paul Roberts:                   Right, as he says. Yeah. Jim Obermayer:              He's bringing people, salespeople to the program, sales managers, and consultants to give tips to inside salespeople. He doesn't want tactics. He doesn't want strategy. He wants tips for inside sales people. Paul Roberts:                   And don't you feel like you really get inside of his head, you really feel like you're in over listening on some intimate conversation? I mean, it's a very personal ... it doesn't feel like I'm watching a speech he's given. It feels like I'm really in a conversation with him or I'm listening to a conversation with ... I'm overhearing a conversation in the next booth here. Jim Obermayer:              Some of the producers love to have those high numbers. Matt Heinz over at Heinz Marketing gets 4,000, 5,000, 6,000 people a month. People can find that's public knowledge. Every month people go and listen to his programs going back four and a half years. Can you believe that, Paul? Four and a half years we've been doing this for Heinz marketing Paul Roberts:                   And he wouldn't do it just for fun. I mean, he's really into measuring and monitoring stuff. As all these guys are, he sees a real return on this stuff, and it isn't just the numbers. That's the mistake most people make. I don't care if it's your Twitter account, your Facebook, you can't just count how many people are subscribing or how many people are listening or watching. That's one metric, but the true metric is who's listening. It's not how many, it's who. If you only did a podcast and it reached only five people, but they were five big, important customers that you wanted to land or five important to counts that you already currently had, wouldn't it be worth the investment to have that kind of connection where they come back each and every week to listen to us? They make time in their busy schedule to listen to you for not 30 seconds, but for 30 minutes, where do you get that kind of access and uninterrupted conversation? Jim Obermayer:              When I speak to people about having a new podcast, first things they say to me is, "How many people will listen to me?" I will say, "Well, how big is your audience?" We promote the programs. We do it on social media and we get them out there, but the people that are most interested in listening to you are the ones that know about your product category, that are on your database, that are your customers, that are your prospects, that go to listen to at speeches, and that's how they build it. Matt Heinz speaks all over the country and he still gets 4,000, 5,000, 6,000 people a month tuning into his podcast to see what he has to say. Paul Roberts:                   And part of it is because it's a way to continue the conversation, not just the initial, meet me, here I am, listen to me. So he gives a speech in front of thousands of people at some trade show, okay, what's next? He packs up his dog and pony show and goes onto the next one here. But if he mentions to them, which I know he does, is, "You want to continue this conversation, listen to my podcast. You can certainly call me and schedule a meeting, happy to talk about that. But until that time, when you're ready to really sit down and talk to me about what I do, and if I can help you, you can keep connected to me. You can keep the conversation alive and going." For him, the introduction is to many of these people that they see in a trade show, the continuation of the conversation is the podcast. Too many people want it the other way round. They see it as just an ad to get leads. Jim Obermayer:              Well, this week, for instance, he's got Jim Benton, the CEO of Chorus.ai on. They're talking about your hired just in time for a pandemic. Q&A with Chorus CEO, Jim Benton. That is an interesting show that I'm going to listen to right after this one. Then we've got Asher Strategies coming on right after that. They're talking to Joe Benjamin CEO, CheetahIQ. How to spend less time researching and more time selling. Paul, we're going to have to interrupt things just a second, because we've got some commercials we have to give here. And when we come back, let's pick it up again. Then you can launch on why podcasts are so popular today- Paul Roberts:                   And so powerful. Jim Obermayer:              And so powerful. Paul Roberts:                   Yes, we do. And just a quick one to tell you that if you're intrigued by what we're talking about, you can join the conversation. You can start your own podcast. Have you ever thought about building your thought leadership? Have you ever thought about meeting people you couldn't otherwise connect with or creating content to fill up your website and your social media, then you've come to the right place. Funnel media makes podcasting easy. So you can be heard by hundreds or thousands or dozens or whoever you want to reach. Separate yourself from the crowd, contact Funnel media today to bring your story to life. We make it easy, convenient. You get the guest. We do the rest. We call it podcastmadeeasy.com, podcastmadeeasy.com. Let's do the rest of the conversation here. Jim Obermayer:              Well, we forgot about West Virginia University. They're a new digital marketing communications Master’s program. They have a new program out there. West Virginia university has been on our program for a couple of years. Every week they have professors and consultants come in to talk about how they teach their students. It's fully online, can be completed in a year. You can get a Master's program. It's with built in certifications from platforms like Google and Facebook. The program gives marketing professionals both strategy and skills to reach audiences on existing and emerging media, learn more at marketingcommunications.edu. That is, Marketingcommunications.edu. Paul Roberts:                   It's not easy to read all those letters. I try and do it every week. Jim Obermayer:              Wvu.edu. Paul Roberts:                   That's right. West Virginia university education. There it is, marketingcommunications.wvu.edu. Jim Obermayer:              Let's finish up our discussion about podcasting, why it's so popular. I want you to talk about the other programs you have on OC Talk Radio. What are the other kinds of shows that you have on? Paul Roberts:                   Well, let's talk about topics, because that's ... Most of our shows like the shows on Funnel Radio fit a certain format. They are to a certain degree like a talk radio show. And what makes them so interesting and informative is you're getting access to people you would never otherwise meet. You can't sit with those CEOs you just rattled off, but Matt Heinz can. And through him, you vicariously get to meet these people. Then it's a conversation. It's not just a scripted thing. They're really sharing some vulnerabilities. I think they get open. They get honest. They get real. Like most social media today, we're looking for authenticity by over just information. We want to know, get real about something, the problems today.                                            Okay. Well, how do we handle the fact that we're bringing you salespeople online during probably one of the most difficult, horrible times to try and go out and sell anybody, anything here? How do you handle that? It's really a conversation and not just an infomercial. Jim Obermayer:              What were the titles of some of your programs? Paul Roberts:                   So, we've got programs like Talent Talk Radio. Talent Talk is a show about HR directors. It's a company that puts out a background checks. Truthfully, they probably just wanted to meet all these people and start a relationship with them, but in the course of doing so, they found out, "Oh my God, people really want to tune in and listen to this stuff, who knew?" HR people can be the dullest people on the planet, in my opinion, but it's such a complex topic these days and the show host is so good at getting them to get real and get past the happy talk. "Oh, everything's perfect. We got no problems."                                            "Yeah. You're the only company in the world that doesn't then." How do you handle diversity? How do you handle all these issues that are hot button issues today here? And he gets them to open up and be real and really give some interesting insights. And he gets some really powerful people. It's amazing. He's had the HR director for Sears, for Vans, for Lockheed Martin, for Chipotle was on the other day. He had the HR director for General Motors on worldwide. You never get a chance to hear these people, so- Jim Obermayer:              How can someone go to his program? Where can they find it? Paul Roberts:                   They can go to OCtalkradio.net. Just click on the button for the program, it'll take them right to it there. And he's on, as all our programs, as all the programs that we syndicate from you and produce here locally, we're on iTunes, iHeart, TuneIn, Spreaker, SoundCloud, Stitcher, any place fine podcasts are found you can probably find ... you can probably find it multiple ways. You can look up the show, Talent Talk. You can look up our station and see the station feed with all of that, just as there is a Funnel feed for all the shows on the Funnel network. So all of those are ways to find them. Jim Obermayer:              What are some of the other shows that you've got on? I know you've got a whole bunch of them on. Paul Roberts:                   There's Riches And Niches. You ever heard that? We're not trying to get one show that gets 1,000,000 listeners. We're trying to have 1000 shows that get 1000 listeners. We're trying to own some subject, so we tend to drill down into very obscure things like alternative investment strategies. I didn't even know what that meant. I thought he was going to talk about odd ball things like baseball cards or coins. It turns out he interviews hedge fund managers and mutual fund managers, the people who come up with active investment strategies where they get in and get out of the market, no more timely topic today than that. They have many of these strategies, didn't see the giant downturns, because they're not just riding stocks and sticking them with them as they go up or down. They're trying to time the markets, trying to predict things, or they're trying to find things that don't fit the same patterns as the market.                                            They're trying to find business development corporations, or commodities, or other things that aren't correlated to the rise and fall of the market. Jim Obermayer:              Is the Charlie Hedges show? Paul Roberts:                   Charlie Wright. And Charlie Wright's an RIA, registered investment advisor, means he manages rich people's money for a percentage. He's not a financial guy that's trying to get them to buy something. They'd give him, I don't know, 1% or 2% of their assets and say, "Go play with it and make us all more money here." Jim Obermayer:              What's the Zandbergen Report. Paul Roberts:                   Zandbergen Report is another type of financial show. He is a financial advisor and he again handles extremely wealthy people here in Newport Beach. And he tries to give a more broad based understanding of many of the things businesses face today, inheritance, trust funds. He's done shows on how do you ensure your high value vehicles and other oddball topics that I thought, "I don't know, I guess I never thought about that," but it's for that group of people, most of whom have suddenly come into wealth. They've sold their company, they went public, and now what do I do with all this money? So he helps them diversify it and not just invest it properly, but to create an entire plan, how they're going to preserve it and pass it on and protect it from taxes and all these things. Jim Obermayer:              What's that program this morning that's on Thursday mornings before all the Funnel Radio Channel programs, the one at 8:00 AM. Paul Roberts:                   Health Talks with Dr. Trinh. Dr. Trinh, he's on the board of Alzheimer's here locally. He's a physician at Memorial Care, big chain here, and also a clinical researcher. So very active speaker in the community. He does just an open talk about health issues every Thursday morning, and hundreds of people. We do that through his Facebook channel. We not only stream it live, but we also go live on his Facebook channel. And, oh my God, hundreds of people participate and want to know, "Should I wear a mask or shouldn't I? Is this going to go away, or isn't it? Tell me the facts from the fiction," and he tries to break it down and give what, as he said, is an ever changing story on an ever changing subject here, but he tries to sift through it and simply tell you. So, that's more of a community based show. We have a lot of specific niche shows. Jim Obermayer:              What about Collective Wisdom? What is that all about? Paul Roberts:                   Collective Wisdom, the collective wisdom of ... Now, that's a topic I'm sure is near and dear to your heart here, Jim. It's the cannabis industry, the business of cannabis. Cannabis is a multibillion dollar business that's being born before our eyes. And as you can imagine, there's lots of rules and regulations being written as we speak. It's the Wild West. There are people who literally are going to make billions out of this, but there are people who are losing billions right now because they don't understand the complexities. They can't get credit cards because it's still federally prohibited. So banks won't let them, so it's a cash based business. Yet they're trying to be legitimate to retail stores, all sorts of craziness. Jim Obermayer:              Me made good on our promise today that there are many uses for podcasts, from talk shows to sales and marketing and HR. Paul Roberts:     And don't just think of it as a talk show. We do 99% of our talk shows, because that's what we all understand. That's the easiest to produce, but it could be a series. It could be a series that you sell. It could be a series of internal conversations. It could be a series like a giant ebook that explains something in great detail. Here's the four stages of growth. Here's the five steps to doing this. It can be fun. It can be informative, and it can be short. It can be long. It can be individual episodes or an arc of a story, but it's a new way of storytelling, which is what we're all looking for over a new medium that we all carry with us. That smartphone that's with you 24 hours a day, that's how you talk to people

We’d all like to know the immediate future. Marketing veteran Darryl Praill predicts what will occur in the world of sales in this episode of Funnel Radio. This short episode is for C-Level executives, specifically sales managers and salespeople. About Darryl Praill Praill is the host of the hugely popular podcast, INSIDE Inside Sales on the Funnel Radio Channel. He also serves as Chief Marketing Officer of VanillaSoft, is a high-tech marketing executive with over 25 years’ experience spanning startups, re-starts, consolidations, acquisitions, divestments, and IPO’s. He has been widely quoted in the media including television, press, and trade publications. He is a guest lecturer, public speaker, and radio personality and has been featured in numerous podcasts, case studies, and best-selling books. Praill is a former recipient of the coveted Forty Under 40 Award and has held senior executive roles in leading companies including Sybase, Cognos (now IBM), webPLAN (now Kinaxis), and CML Emergency Services (now AIRBUS). He has raised over $50 million in venture funding across multiple organizations and consulted with world-class corporations including Salesforce, SAP, and Nielsen. He is a Computer Science graduate from Sheridan College.    Funnel Radio Channel is hosted by James Obermayer, which is a program on the Funnel Radio Channel.          

Yeah, yeah these are difficult times, but marketers are always faced with difficult times.  It is every marketer's job to over-come difficult times, be it market crashes, governments that stop buying, recessions, product failures, competitors, international meltdowns, hurricanes, tornadoes.  As marketers, we've been there and done that and always found a way to recover because that's what we do.  That's why we were hired. We perform in the most difficult of times.  During this show Matt Heinz talks about: "These are the times," Matt says, "Where there is a separation of marketers who understand what it is to create a market versus those in it for the quick win." This is a time for great examples of empathetic and generous brands to create value We will look back in six months and see those marketers that were investing in their future or which were fearful of their present Will you accept your responsibility to rebuild your business?  Your country?  Will you be yourself, which is the builder of wealth for your company or just go after the quick win and abandon your principles? About Matt Heinz A prolific author and nationally recognized, award-winning blogger, Matt is President and Founder of Heinz Marketing and the host of Sales Pipeline Radio where his listener base tops 105,000.   More Matt Heinz   Virtual Sales Training: How To Support Your Now Entirely Virtual Team   Coronavirus, Trade Shows and Value vs Venue    Funnel Radio Channel is hosted by James Obermayer, which is a program on the Funnel Radio  Channel.        

CSO Insight Study Results are Troubling – Has the Canary Died Yet? Seleste Lunsford, Chief Research Officer of CSO Insights discusses the startling results of their latest World-Class Sales Performance Study: All that Glitters is Not Gold, with Funnel Radio host Jim Obermayer.  Lunsford talks about how the respondents in the study reported increases in quota attainment and revenue last year, however, key metrics show a decrease in adherence to sales best practices from previous studies.  The authors of the study state that there is possibly a misleading nature of sales effectiveness metrics collected from the nearly 1,000 sales organizations.   Is this a canary in the coal mine scenario? The survey shows that world-class sales organizations have systems driving performance that smaller organizations lack. Why is the report so important this year? What was the triggering event that prompted the study? Is this study generally only about companies with large ticket products and services? What are the most startling results? What are the sales effectiveness metrics that alarmed you? Does the study tell the reader what to do about the failures?  About the report and how to get a copy:   “All that glitters is NOT GOLD” 2019 World-Class Sales Practices Study Sections: Section I: The Deceptively Shiny State of Sales Section II: Customer Engagement Section III: Performance Support Section IV: Strategy Alignment Study Parameters: The 2019 World-Class Sales Practices Study collected data from more than 1,500 respondents from January through March 2019. The analysis was conducted on responses from 949 sales leaders. This sample was global in nature and spans across B2B industries, with particularly strong representation from the technology, manufacturing, healthcare, professional services, and banking/finance sectors. GET THE REPORT GET THE REPORT SUMMARY About Seleste Lunsford Seleste Lunsford has consulted with sales and service organizations for more than 20 years, helping them acquire, grow and retain client relationships. As Managing Director of CSO Insights, Seleste guides CSO Insights’ research focus areas and define its market deliverables. She has co-authored two books, “Secrets of Top-Performing Salespeople” and “Strategies that Win Sales.” She’s proud to have supported some of the world’s most recognized companies including AAA, Alliance Bernstein, American Express, Arrow Electronics, Citibank, Convergys, U.S. Department of Defense, Office Depot, Traveler’s Insurance, and Verizon Wireless. About CSO Insights Independent research backed by one of the world’s premier selling and service brands  CSO Insights is the independent research arm within Miller Heiman GroupTM, dedicated to improving the performance and productivity of complex B2B sales. The CSO Insights team of respected analysts provides sales leaders with the research, data, expertise, and best practices required to build sustainable strategies for sales performance improvement. CSO Insights’ annual sales effectiveness studies, along with its benchmarking capabilities, are industry standards for sales leaders seeking operational and behavioral insights into how to improve their sales performance and to gain holistic assessments of their selling and sales management efficacy. Annual research studies address sales and service best practices, sales enablement and sales performance optimization.  

  Miller Heiman Group, the flagship 40-year-old company in the sales training and consulting space, has introduced integration of “Scout” for Microsoft Dynamics. In this program, Dana Hamerschlag, Chief Product Officer of Miller Heiman Group, discusses how Scout improves daily sales productivity and CRM compliance which frees up face to face sales time.  Hamerschlag also explains what tools sellers should focus on to get the most out of their CRM. About our Guest Dana Hamerschlag is the Chief Product Officer with Miller Heiman. In her role at Miller Heiman Group, Dana leads the global product organization and is driving the continued innovation of technology solutions. Dana brings more than 15 years of experience in technology companies backed by venture capital and private equity, where she has run product management, product marketing, strategy, and operations. Previously, she served as Vice President of Product Management at Ellucian, where she led the CRM business and significantly grew revenue from $0 to $38 million, paving the way for a $3.5 billion transaction.  Dana spent the early part of her career at The Boston Consulting Group.  About Miller Heiman Group  Miller Heiman Group is the global leader in providing organizations sales methodology plus sales technology to drive revenue and change business outcomes. The company’s training, consulting, technology and research solutions align process, people, tools, data, and analytics to prepare sales and service organizations for the future of selling. For more information, visit www.millerheimangroup.com.  ______________________________________________ Funnel Radio is hosted by James Obermayer and sponsored by the radio/podcast company the Funnel Media Group LLC.

Seleste Lunsford, Chief Research Officer of CSO Insights discusses the surprising results of their latest Sales Performance study with Funnel Radio host Jim Obermayer. She talks about how the 900  companies in the study report that 95% are on their revenue plan and yet other parts of the report show some disturbing sales performance outcomes that show there could be trouble on the horizon. It appears companies are hiring more sales reps, but sales performance is down per rep; this means sales expenses are up and with any downturn there will be large problems. About the report and how to get a copy:   Selling in the Age of Ceaseless Change: 2018-2019 Sales Performance Study.   Sections: Revenue Are up Sales Performance is Not. Customer-Centricity Separates Top-Performing Organizations Lead Generation Suffers from Organization Silos Planning improves New Account Capture Account Renewals Dominate Revenues Win Rates of Forecasted Deals Vex Sales Leaders Roughly 900 global sales leaders were surveyed to identify the four main objectives underpinning their performance improvement efforts in the coming 12 months. These main objectives were improving lead generation, capturing new accounts, expanding penetration into existing customers, and increasing win rates. The purpose of this report is to show how sales organizations today are performing in terms of these objectives, how that compares to recent years and what successful companies are doing that’s working for improving sales performance. GET THE REPORT GET THE REPORT SUMMARY About Seleste Lunsford Seleste Lunsford has consulted with sales and service organizations for more than 20 years, helping them acquire, grow and retain client relationships. As Managing Director of CSO Insights, Seleste guides CSO Insights’ research focus areas and define its market deliverables. An experienced business leader, Seleste has led a range of consulting, product development, professional services and operations functions. She has co-authored two books, “Secrets of Top-Performing Salespeople” and “Strategies that Win Sales.” She’s also written articles on sales effectiveness found in Selling Power, Entrepreneur, Chief Learning Officer and PharmaVoice, as well as DestinationCRM.com and HR.com. She’s proud to have supported some of the world’s most recognized companies including AAA, Alliance Bernstein, American Express, Arrow Electronics, Citibank, Convergys, U.S. Department of Defense, Office Depot, Traveler’s Insurance and Verizon Wireless. Seleste earned both her bachelor’s degree and MBA from Florida State University. _______________________________________________ Funnel Radio is hosted by James Obermayer and sponsored by the radio/podcast company the Funnel Media Group LLC.

Having your own personal brand, beyond words on a resume or your company biography, makes sense, is required and expected. It could be a sales management job, marketing management (of course); even CEOs, CIOs, CFOs and presidents have personal brand considerations.  When you consider creating your own personal brand, you’re investing in yourself and your future. ----more---- Your basic social media activities have their place, but we’re talking about something beyond table stakes.  What I’m referring to is the need to have marketplace visibility for your thoughts, philosophies, problem solving skills, and leadership.  A personal brand demonstrates what you stand for and what do others think of you.  The questions are, how can you break away from the crowd and make yourself visible in a sea of talented people?  How can you expand your network – the people who know and follow you?   In Albert-László Barabasi’s book, The Formula = The Universal Laws of Success, he says hard research proves that “Your success isn’t about you and your performance. It’s about us and how we perceive your performance.”  The larger your visibility the larger the network will be and the network will amplify your success.   More about that in a few minutes. Personal branding is a career necessity for many people. Branding can start with your blog, speaking, tweeting, developing followers, eBooks, and guest blogging.  These things make you visible to companies and maybe to employers who approach you, but it isn't enough if your aspirations are high.  What customers and companies seek today is thought leadership from their people, and from consultants and service providers. Thought leadership has grown for individuals. In years past, thought leadership was driven by writing a book, by speaking, and through speakers’ bureaus, research reports and PR effort. Today, thought leadership and an individual’s brand can be augmented through the wise use of social media in its broadest definition. If someone wants to increase their visibility, they can write a book. This is, however, hugely time consuming if it’s beyond the self-published, poorly edited, 50-to-100-page softcover effort made by many would-be authors. I’m talking about a 230-page, professionally copy-edited book from a major publisher, which can take several years of effort.  Being a speaker at conferences and workshops is a precursor to book publishing, and often easier once the book is published.   Speaker bureaus are great if you already have a recognized name or company, and you’ve published enough books. They can get you the gig, but it’s still time consuming.    Once you embark on this effort, you may find yourself devoted to this type of time-consuming branding instead of to your daily working career.   The Shortcut: Radio Podcasting There’s an easy method to creating your personal brand that doesn’t require travel, two years of book writing and editing, or mountains of research and article writing. The answer is to host your own internet-based radio program.  Radio and podcast replays dramatically expand your reputation and network.  As Barabasi says, “Performance drives success, but when performance can’t be measured, networks drive success.” Nothing builds a network faster, cheaper and broader than having your own radio podcast.    A podcast can be a simple recording you create and place on a service from a storage site. A radio program/podcast, a step up, can be broadcast live at the same time on the same day of the week, or on the same day each month, and then follow-on listeners come from the podcast recording posted on a hosting site.   It can be broadcast once a month, bi-weekly or more often. The key is consistency; the network will want to hear from you. As the network builds, so will your reputation and a perception of performance on your part.  You must also promote the program aggressively. These types of consistent programs create followers and listeners. At the Funnel Media Group’s Funnel Radio Channel, we have 19 hosts for various programs heard once a month, bi-weekly or weekly.  We call them the Real Personalities of Funnel Radio. Their programs might have a single speaker and topic, or guests who join the host.  None are longer than 30 minutes.  Listeners for these programs vary with frequency, time and how the programs are promoted.  Program startup numbers can be 50-250 listeners per program, up to 100-500 listeners.  Programs promoted over time can have 750-1,500 listeners.  Popular programs with typical social media exposure can have thousands of listeners. The size of the host company's database and current followers make a substantial contribution to the followers and program listener downloads.  These listeners are unique because they are no longer just at-work listeners; they are at home, walking the dog, climbing mountains, bicycling, exercising, or traveling listeners, at night and on the weekend. Listeners are domestic and international.  The “hosts” of these radio/podcast programs have followers, build databases, and create multi-use content for books, eBooks, case studies, blogs, articles, and speeches.   They build credibility.   Podcast programs are then registered with Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Blubrry and the B2B Podcast Directory so that they can be found by host name and subject.  Program guests, on talk-radio format programs, often provide the host with testimonials for his or her services or products, introduce the host and company to potential buyers, and build name recognition (brand recognition) for the host and their company.  Starting a radio/podcast is quick and inexpensive.   You need recording software and a place to store the podcast so listeners can come to the site or listen.  The embeddable players the site provides allow you to put the programs on your own website or blog (or a guest’s website or blog).  For $75-$100 per month you can have all of this and be in the business of podcasting and building your personal and your company’s brand.  It’s also time consuming, and if it’s not consistently broadcast it has little impact to build a network. However, there are radio/podcast agencies such as ours (Funnel Media Group LLC), that manage all of this for you except the actual host duties.   We encourage hosts to produce a consistent program that listeners can follow. Agencies offer a range of services including storage, live programming, digital streaming and production, a studio and announcer, editing, music, and a professional touch seldom found in self-produced podcasts.  One of our Funnel Radio Channel programs has been broadcasting for several years.  At first its programs were bi-weekly, and then weekly after a few months.  To date, this program has 152 episodes with 42,610 listeners, with a per-episode average of 280 listeners.  Some programs have had 875 listeners.   The fact is, this company CEO and author, and his program, have had 42,610 people hear him speak over 21,305 hours of on-air time. These numbers are drawn from public data.  He did this on his computer via the net, and by phone with the studio.  Guests, customers and non-customers, know his name, what he stands for, his judgement on marketing and sales, and something about his company services.  He has an extensive personal and company brand recognition. Of course, you can too, should you choose to take the "shortcut" to improving your personal brand by using radio podcasting.  For information about improving your personal brand, extending your network and hosting your own radio/podcast program, either once a month, bi-weekly or more often, contact Jim Obermayer at jobermayer@funnelmediagroupllc dot com, or call him at (415) 521 4278.

This is the extended version of what I taught at Funnel Hacking Live 2018. There are TWO parts to a funnel's core... What’s going on everyone? It’s 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 would 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 learned, apply, and share marketing strategies to grow my online business, using only today's Internet best sales funnels. My name is Steve Larsen, and welcome to Sales Funnel Radio. I am so excited for this episode. I've been dying to record it. I feel like it's going to be one of the episodes that I look back on and I'm like, “man that was one of the Hallmark, amazing episodes of sales Funnel Radio.” You know what I mean? 10 years from now, hopefully this show is still going, but I feel like I look back and be like, “man, that was one of them. That was one of the ones that made it click for a lot of people.” It's one of the things that made a click for me, and anyway, I'm excited to share with you. It all kind of started honestly, well, how should I say this? How far back you want to go? Lets see, I was born in 1988. No. So, it's been it’s been a lot of fun working with Russell because, what is fun about it is, I feel like he and I are probably some of the only people on planet earth that geek out at the level that we do. And so, every time we see each other it's like a show and tell, like, “hey dude, check this out.” And he shows me, and we go through all the cool stuff he's doing. And I'm like, “yeah, check this out.” I tell him all the stuff I'm going through and doing, and the epiphanies that either or of us have had. And so anyway, I was chatting with him a little while ago, and that is when he was saying, “Hey, we want to get you on the funnel hacking live stage”, and I was like, “sweet.” Are you serious? Okay. That’d be awesome. And, which just ended, and I'm kind of backtracking a little, okay? I'm a little bit behind on recording these episodes. But I went and he said, “We want you to teach new offer creation in 10 minutes.” I was like, 10 minutes?! What? Oh my gosh! That's what I teach in 3 days at the fan event.” You know what I mean? Are you serious? Okay. Oh my gosh. So, I was sitting there in and the magic formula happened, which is caffeine and dubstep. I was pacing around my own office here and I remember. My head was just kind of subconsciously on this problem, and I love that. Because I will be in random places around the house, around wherever, and I'll have these epiphanies like, “oh my gosh! It's easier like that... Holy crap!” My head is constantly on these problems, you guys. I rarely think about anything else, which sounds like obsession, and it is, and I'm glad it is, okay. I sit and just kind of think. I told you guys a little while ago how I kind of brainstorm and come up with these ideas. I imagine them as these little threads and I kind of tug on them, see where they lead, and if it's like good then I just drop it and I go on to the next thing and try and find different possibilities for solving different problems. Anyway, I was thinking through. I was trying to distill down the 3 days into minutes. It was rough, it was rough. I was trying to work the problem, and figure out the different angles to teach it. I went into click funnels at like 10:00 at night the week before Funnel Live happened. I sat there and I was trying to do it for about 2 hours. I was doodling. For some reason if I can doodle it I know that I can teach it, and I know that it's a clear thing. And so that's the reason why I draw so many pictures. So, I was doodling and I was like, “oh my gosh.” I started having these epiphanies and they start coming faster, and faster, and faster, on the way to teach this. Well, next morning I'm back in the home office here, which is where I'm now, and I was standing in front of my white board and all of a sudden I had this, guys I don't know really how this happens but I will forget where I am. It actually makes me a little bit nervous because it's happening more frequently. Whatever I'm thinking of, that's where I physically feel like I am at that time. I will forget where I'm standing and I get kind of lost, in my head. 20 minutes will go by and I'll suddenly come to and realize that I've been standing in the corner of the room for a while. But I’ve been deep meditation and thought. It's a little bit weird and it's kind of happening more frequently. I'm kind of trying to get used it. So, I was in one of those little, I don't know what I'm going to call it, weirdness things. I was kind of zoning out a little bit. All of a sudden, I had this realization. One of the things that people struggle with the most when it comes to building funnels is, they think that the funnel is a series of pages, and we have had the hardest time trying to describe in this very small amount of words, the shortest amount of words, what a funnel actually is. Right? My mom used to think that funnels, I was selling literally kitchen hardware. “You’re selling funnels, kitchen stuff. You don’t even know how to cook.” I’d be like, “yeah I know I should not be in that space.” Anyway, we’ve had a hard time getting people to understand what a funnel is without people seeing it, right? We've tried literally for years. We’ve tried to figure out how to explain what a funnel is in the shortest amount of time, where people are like, and “oh.” A couple of years ago, that's honestly where this whole conversation started. We were trying to figure it out. It's a series of pages linked together to turn prospective customers into buying customers. Oh man, that's just a lot of a lot of, how do we shrink it down? What’s the core of funnel building? Suddenly, it hit me! That’s what I'm so excited about, you guys! Holy crap! What is it?! I figured out. I was sitting I realized, I was standing in front of the white board and I realized, that at the core funnel building is the offer. For a long time I was saying that. It's the offer, it's the offer, and the core funnel building is the offer. But it's not. It's actually only half of it. The other half of it is story. It's the sales message. It's the belief that carries the offer, and those two things is what makes a funnel. It's the reason why whether or not you decided to make a funnel, you have a funnel. If you're in business and you've made a sale, you brought them through a funnel. Whether online or offline, intentional or not, you have a funnel. It's just better if it was intentional. It's the reason why people can go, it doesn't matter if it's online, offline. Doesn't matter what you're selling. If there was a sale that was made, there was some kind of offer. Most times people don't make an intentional offer, they have a product, but there's also a message, a belief that carried that into the heart and mind of that person when they purchased it. I was like, holy crap! Maybe I should find that box, because I sent Russell. I was like freaking out like, “holy crap.” And he was like, “oh my gosh that’s crazy. Should we change the drawings, change sketches?” So, this whole concept, it's not leaving me, and it's been staying for a long time, guys. So, what I wanted to do real quick is go down and kind of teach you guys the same thing that I taught at Funnel Hiking Live. It took me a solid, see I had this major realization. It was like three o'clock in the afternoon and I started yelling. No one else was in the house at all and I would start yelling. “Oh my gosh! This is so cool! Are you serious?!” I was just yelling. Legitimate yelling and screaming. “This is crazy!” Yeah, I'm that guy but whatever. I'm proud to be that guy. And I was like, “sweet.” I had to get my slides to them by the next morning. And so I didn't go to sleep. Had dinner, said goodnight to the kiddos, and then from that moment on, I stayed up until 4:45 in the morning distilling down to ten slides. It was so hard, guys, was crazy. So I worked a lot on this, not just at night but this has been a problem that's been on my head for years. I’ve had the privilege of teaching a lot of times. But the quest to make things more simple is extremely important and making things complex does not make you smarter. In fact, usually means you don't bring as many people along with you, because they think you've got to be like techno babbly, loaded up. It’s better to just keep it simple. So, what I want to do real quick is, I want to teach this in the way that I experienced it and I want it to be, how should I explain this, gosh guys, I would take notes. Because when you realize at the core of this, and you realize really, there’s three forces that were fighting with, that I was fighting with, to try to figure out what this is. When you realize what these are, where they come from. I feel like it’ll make people’s lives better because you'll be more intentional on both funnel hacking and creating your offers, your funnels in general. Then I see episodes here, I can dive into this to teach you what I am looking at when I look at someone's funnel. It's not so much about pages anyway. So, let's get into here. So, let's start with the plot to a woman's story. If you don’t know what I'm talking about, go to Funnel Hacking Live. So, I started with this question, how do you make money online? It really happened when my wife and I found out that we were going to have a kid. Our first child. We were super excited. This is over four years ago now, which is crazy. I was reading dotcom secrets. Read for the first time, you guys all now this. I was in the prune, I was in an Army exercise. Laying down, with my M-16 for about 10 days in the dirt. With my weapon in my right hand, and dotcom secrets in my left hand. That's how I read the book the first time. I read the book it was like, “this is crazy.” What I realized was that it was saying, funnel hack somebody.” Model someone to the T and then just do what they did. And there's safety in that. And it makes sense to do that. Students that get hired to click funnels, we start putting together expert secrets, but the message of that one is, create something new. So the first one says, model someone to the T, don’t deviate, the second one says, make something completely new. Do not do something like what someone else did. And then I'm reading another book, read the book Innovator's Dilemma, which says that if a new market does not exist it cannot be analyzed. It cannot be analyzed. It's unknowable because it doesn't exist. It's your turn to create a new niche. Your turn to create a new market. You're going to have a hard time doing that out of your own precepts, out of your own head because you don't know you. So, by the law of the way this happens you must create the new niche with the customer. It cannot be from your own head. Right. So you take those 3 concepts and think about them. Number 1, you've got to model hack, model someone to the T. Number 2, and create something brand new. Don't bottle anybody. Number 3, it must be created with the customer or it'll be an approval based offer by defaulting. What? How does this all 3 go together? This question has been on my head for a long time. So, to answer this we've got to understand more of the core of the funnel I was talking about, because the answer is actually to do all 3 of those in tandem, to a point. First of all, we're going to funnel hack. Second, this is like Dorothy in The Yellow Brick Road. We're going to follow the yellow brick road as far as the yellow brick road goes. When it ends, I'm going to teach you how to make a new brick, lay down there, but do it with people so that it gets laid perfectly, with directional customer. Does that make sense? That's the answer. That's how you do it.... So, to understand more how to do this, let’s understand the core funnel building. First of all there is an offer and a belief, that’s. That’s at the core of a funnel. That's why it can be offline, online. Whether or not you made one on purpose, you have one. If you made a sale, you made a funnel. So, there is an offer and a belief, and the belief carries the offer. This is like those little red wagons. That's a like story, whatever is in the red wagon is belief, that’s like the offer. The story carries the offer. That's how it works. Without the belief, we would have the story part, the offer part does not get delivered. Because they’re going to look at it and go, I don’t understand that.” But if you understand that story it's what changes beliefs, it’s what changes paradigms, that people are like, “oh my gosh, I need that offer.” Yes you do, comes with it. So, the story delivers the offer. Is this making sense so far? I don’t know if it is. I know I'm going kind of deep in this. It’s a little more techno babbly. I have graphics, and pictures, and drawings to display this but I need you to understand how this works. Since that is the core of a funnel, you've got to understand that dream customer, the people that you would love to be buying from you, they're already consuming both. They're already consuming both and here's why. I don't want you to think of health, wealth, and relationships as 3 markets. The health, wealth and relationships, those are like the 3 moneymaking markets. Those are the three no-duh buying experiences. Those are the 3 markets we try and fit every single thing into. Health, wealth, relationships. If you got health, wealth, relationships, one of those, your offer might not fit into it. You're like, “Steven, I'm selling Rubik's Cube. How does that work for health, wealth, relationships?” The actual product does not need to fit in it but the sales message, at least, must. I usually use the example of Gillette. Gillette razors. Right. What market are they in? Health, wealth, relationships? They’re in relationships. Why? Because, I'm thinking of the commercial, some guy is shaving in the mirror, and he's like, “oh yeah, I'm the freaking man,” and a woman comes up afterwards and feels his face up. You've seen the commercials, right. That's what's happening. They're selling relationships through the commodity of razors. Dudes, you want the woman, you use this razor. Right. That's what they're doing. You got to understand that your dream customer is already consuming both an offer and a belief, with hopes that it delivers to them either health, wealth, or relationships. That's another way to think of this. Because they're already consuming an offer and a belief, your opinions don't matter. You're not the one who fills your own wallet, right. You don't fill your own wallet. Stop caring so much about what you think. Step number 1 is all about hacking, which is really answering these two questions. The two question is number 1, what is my customer’s current vehicle, or offer that they're consuming? And number 2, what’s the current belief of how they're buying it? It’s the and how what. What is it? You guys have heard that before. I'm just trying to tie all these pieces together so it becomes clear. That's the core of funnel hacking. Funnel hacking not so much, “hey there's a green button on the right, there’s a picture of someone on the left.” Yes, that's like the micro level. At the macro level, what you really looking at, is you're trying to answer the question, what is the current offer and current story that my dream customer is consuming. That's my starting place, that's funnel hacking. That’s the core of funnel hacking. So, what you're going to do is, like I said, you're going to fit your business into one of the 3 markets, right. Health, wealth, and relationships. And when you funnel hack, you're looking for those two things right. The offer the belief, from the red ocean. Now that you know what the offer and the belief are, the second step is start applying more of the expert secret's model. Expert secret’s model is taking it into a place where you're selling a new opportunity, a new niche a new market that you're creating. And by the law of creating something new that does not exist, you cannot analyze it, therefore you must make your with the customer. And there's various ways to do that. Get clever. That's how it launched my product back in January. So, please understand the offer equals the result, the offer delivers the result. When you create an offer, not product, it means you no longer have to compete on price. Rather than selling back to this red ocean where everyone’s competing on price and someone’s like, “no, I'm going to bleed for the customer more. No I'm going to bleed for the customer. No I'll take less margin. No, I'll take less margin.” It’s this race to the bottom. If you don’t do that crap the way to get around it is by selling it offer. Because it over delivers on value, which lets you sell sell it at the actual price you'd like to. So, just structure an offer, this is super hard to do for podcasts. I hope this is making sense, guys. I hope this is good stuff. Please understand that every single one of these concepts I'm talking about are all things that I realized over the last two years, especially, as my head has just not really ever left the topic. But when you're going to structure an offer, you actually don't structure the offer based off of the offer in the red ocean. You structure the offer based off of the belief in the red ocean. Does make sense? Let me say that again. To create a new opportunity to create a new vehicle, right, that will deliver health, wealth, or relationships, one of those three, you actually don't create it off of what the current vehicle and offer is. Actually created off of the current belief is, and from that we gain the vehicle internal and external related beliefs. This is complete technobabble and I am way the weeds here. Please stick with me, okay? We're going to find vehicle based beliefs that people have inside the red ocean. internal and external. The internal beliefs, I like to think of them as insecurities. These are these are beliefs people how about themselves and their capacity to actually achieve something. I can't speak I'm not good enough. I could get on stage. I can't talk. I would know how to do this. I, I, I, I, and it's their internal struggles that they have when they see this new vehicle that you're going to present. Here's how you get health, wealth, or relationships. They look at it like, “that's so cool.” “You know what. I actually believe you a little bit, but I'm not good enough.” And that's where the internal belief comes from. Or internal false belief. The external false belief is usually more about excuses, then they blame their ability to be successful with that vehicle based on things that are away from them. They are pointing away from their own body. I don't have enough money. There’s not enough, I don't have time, my spouse doesn't want to support me in this. Does that make sense? And they're pointing away, so as soon as you get them to acknowledge the fact that that vehicle is the way to get them health, wealth, relationships right that old vehicles not good any more, and you can offer this brand new one. As soon as you get them to accept that that vehicle, the next two places they go, is usually in this order. It's usually internal for insecurities, and external for the type of excuses that they're that they're running through. Their excuses running away from them. Time, money, resources, spouse. That’s how it’s working. From those very three believes, vehicle interlocks to all, that is everything that I need to create a new opportunity. Both offer and story. This is literally how I did it, guys, when I launched back in January. I launched click funnels December 31st. No offer. I didn’t have an offer, I didn't have a sales message, I didn’t have a funnel, and I had nothing. The funnel wasn’t even built. That's it. I had nothing. All I knew is what the current vehicle internal and external beliefs were. That was all. And from that, I was able to go and develop the product, the message, the offer, and the funnel, the script all of it. This part is so powerful and I feel like people just will skip over it like, “I know what the false beliefs are.” If you really know what those false beliefs are, you also know what stories the people are telling themselves in their heads that are sustaining those false beliefs. You know the experiences they went through that created the story. You know what they're telling, that is the place in my mind where you intimately learn and understand your customer. And when you do so, it is everything you need to actually be successful in your funnel. Because it creates the core in the funnel, a sales message, and an offer. Those two things. So, what we do is we take those vehicle internal and external beliefs, and we make a product for each one of them, a product. And we bundle them together with the main thing you originally wanted to sell, and that is the offer. Does that make sense? Man, this is so much easier to see, drawing stuff. I've it all drawn out here. I wish you guys could see it. So, the offer and the simplest form that I can explain it, if you take the main thing that you actually want them to be buying and you bundle in a few other products that are directly addressing the vehicle internal and external beliefs. For example, “Russell, I would get click funnels but I don't know what to write.” And Russell comes out like, “Don't worry about it. We've got this thing called funnel scripts, you need to write.” Does that to make sense? It’s a bonus that he's giving away when you buy the main thing, funnel hacks? Does that make sense? So, you're trying to sell the main thing, then you have several the products underneath. This is super super techno babbly. A new niche is created when you deliver a new vehicle, a new offer. The offer the vehicle. And second, when you deliver a new story new belief that supports the vehicle. Does that make sense? A new niche, a new market is created, when you deliver a new offer and belief. It's the core of funnels. You're just creating a new funnel, selling it back to the red ocean that you stemmed out of. There was a guy who walked up to me once at an event. He walked up to me and he goes, I don't know remember who it was, he walks up then he goes, “hey Steven, I got this sweet idea.” And he told me the idea. He's on like, first I'm going to do this. And then second, I'm going to do this, and then third.” This is my stack, this is my offer. These are all products that I'm going to deliver, these are the bonuses. And at the end of it he's like, do you think that's a good idea?” And I said, “Well, who's going to be seeing it? What's the sub market that you're stemming out of? What's the red ocean that you're actually stemming out of? And he goes, I don't know.” And I said, “That’s the riskiest crap I've ever heard of in my life.” You have to know what sub market you're stemming out of, otherwise you're creating things out of your own head, your own imagination. Scary. Be creative guys, just be creative. Second, not first. There's no relationship between being good and getting paid. However, there’s a huge relationship between being good at marketing and getting paid. What I'm trying to teach you and show you guys, is that this whole thing, the core of funnel building, is a belief. That’s marketing. It's a story. You're telling a story, you're changing beliefs. It's the sales message itself. And above it, it's carrying the offer. And that's all it is. That's all it is. It was 25 minutes for me to spit all that out. But I'm trying to tell the stories associated with all the graphs, so that it helps break and rebuild your beliefs. But I hope that that makes sense. I hope that that's helpful as I say it. Because I want you guys understand why this matters so much. If you're going out and you’re like, “Hey Stephen. I went out and I created this sweet funnel. It’s not converting. Right. And he took no thought at all of the actual sales message, the offer, and stuff like that. It's going to be it's going to be rough ride. It's the reason why a lot of times I’ll make up a design that I think looks kind of cool, but I don't spend that much time on it. But my stuff converts well. Why? Because I got a sick offer that fulfills the actual sales message. That fulfills the actual belief that I'm breaking and rebuilding for them. That's why. That's why design doesn't matter as much as what you did. That's why. I want you to understand that. Anyway, I'm blabbering now. But I hope that makes sense. Just remember that at the core funnel building, at the core of a funnel general, is a belief, which is carrying an offer. All you got to remember from this episode. And you start to think through that, those are the things your funnel hacking. Those are the things you're creating in the new niche. Those are the things that will deliver a customer to you. So, I'm super excited by that. I am seriously considering, in fact Russell's suggesting I do it too, make a book about offer creation. This is a topic that I obsess over and I love the science, and art piece of offer creation. So, hopefully that was helpful. I know a lot of stuff and it’s a bit of long episode there. Good thing you guys are used to it by now. Alright, talk to you later. Bye. Hey, thanks for listening. Please remember to rate and subscribe. Got a question you want answered live on the show. Head over sales funnelradio.com and ask your question now.

My message to market to offer match... Hey, what's up everyone? This is Steve Larsen, and you're listening to Sale's Funnel Radio. I've spent the last four years learning from the most brilliant marketers today, and now I've left my 9:00-5:00 to take the plunge and build my million dollar business. The real questions 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 Sale's Funnel Radio... What's up, new intro! Hey, first off, just celebrating 100 thousand downloads. We've actually be past that for quite a while, just have not had the chance to create the new intro. I wrote this script while I was in the airport, I think two days ago, and I was like let's go do this, let's get it done. Anyways, hopefully you like that. I wanted to be more forward, and open, and purposeful about what this podcast is really all about, and why I do what I do. The first about 100 episodes were me just documenting the journey and lessons as I sat next to the man Russell Brunson, of course, right? After that though, I wanted to make a really strong point of this is what I did, when I did it, this is my adjustments as I saw what market was telling me to switch. This is the part of the business and part of the funnel I'm building here and there, but not until this point because of this and that. Do you know know what I mean? I'm trying to help you guys see what I'm doing and why I'm ding it. We certainly had a chance to build a lot of those kind of things for other entrepreneurs and such along the way, and finally I was like man, I see this pattern, it's the same pattern, regardless of the industry, I'm just going to go do it, and it's been working great. Anyway, it's been a ton of fun. Here's to 100 thousand downloads, and moving along, and me kind of documenting the journey as I keep going forward. It's been off to a great start, we're officially in the month of March, which is crazy. That's nuts... Anyway, hey, so this last week I was, I've traveling like a beast, guys. About two weeks ago I was in Vegas, last week I was in Dallas, and then I hope those of you that are coming to Funnel Hacking Live I'll get a chance to actually meet you. I got something cool. Stay tuned, I think next episode I'm going to drop something cool for you guys, for those of you who are actually coming to Funnel Hacking Live. Anyways, I was speaking last week, and I don't know what the deal is with when events get created, but I feel like they get the speakers in by saying there's going to be this many people, and getting people in events is like the hardest thing on planet earth. To get someone to buy something on the internet, that's a lot easier, because, I mean, you're either having to ship something to their house, they don't have to change anything in their plans, or it's literally an info product, and you're just giving access to them, or some coaching, but an event? They got to take time out of their life. They're going to plan a flight, they're going to plan hotel rooms, they're going to plan how to get from the airport to the hotel, they're going to plan, does this make sense? What are they going to eat, what are they going to wear? They got to pack a bag? They got to make arrangements. Besides the fact you're going to sell them the actual ticket, like it's pretty incredible to watch how people, but you can really see who the amazing, amazing individual marketers are based on the events that they're putting, on which is Russell Brunson's No Different, it's freaking huge. It's amazing, it's bar none the best marketing event that is in there, that is out there. In my very humble, but straight forward opinion, and correct opinion. Anyway, this last event I was speaking at was awesome. There was supposed to be 2000 people, there was only 1000 people, which is still a lot of people, and that was a lot, which is great. I had a lot of fun, but I was expecting more. Anyway, a lot of fun though. In the evening time I went and I spoke, and I got to go to dinner with some friends that were there, and one of the people asked me a question. They said, "Steven, how do you really come up with all this podcast material? Where do you see yourself in five years? What are you going to be saying?" This is one of the major concerns that I feel like people get when they start considering publishing regularly, right? I had the same concern. The concern was what the heck do you say? Especially after I can come up with a few different episode ideas, but after a while I don't know what to be saying anymore. You know what I mean? I totally get it. I went through the exact same predicament. Whereas I don't even know, what am I going to say in episode 97? What about episode 140? What am I going to say when I'm at episode 1000? Oh, my gosh, right? I will tell you that I don't care at all until I'm at episode 96 is over. Until 139 is over, until 9999 is over. Okay? There are times, though, I've don't that six part series where I went through and deep dived with other experts in their funnels. There is times where there is a lot of planning involved with it, but I started just talking very openly about how I do my shows, and I just wanted to drop this little tiny thing onto you, and help you understand how. I feel like this is one talent and skill that has served in many areas, and I know is one of the major reasons why I've been speaking more. I know is one of the reasons why I've been able to go out and even do Russell's fad events, it's because of podcasting. I was talking to them, and I was like, "Well, here's the thing that a lot of people don't realize, is that you're learning with me. Okay, we're learning at the same time, I'm just telling you what I'm learning." How many of you guys are learning something new probably every day? Right, everybody. Everybody is. Are you telling anyone about it? One of the major things that I did in college, I know one of the major reasons why I started getting straight A's, I do believe ... You guys know that I am very religious, I believe in God, and I don't live perfectly, but I try to live the best I can. I know that for me I did really, really, really well in school. A lot of that was divine intervention, there is not a doubt in my mind. But a lot of it had to do with my own action, obviously, all of it. None of it happens without my own action, and one of the habits that I started creating for myself is that every time I came back from a class in college, this is very key, listen to this, this is, it's the same pattern for how I come up with stuff in my podcast. Every time, most times I should say, as often as I could, one of the things I actively did was whatever I learned in class that day that was exciting, that was interesting, that was prolific, that was amazing, that was something I wanted to remember, I made it a point to teach it to somebody else as quickly as I could. The moment I was done learning whatever, whether it was stuff I was studying on my own, or stuff that was in a class, or something I was building a funnel for another business, in college, that's where I developed that pattern, I developed that habit. When I learned something that is incredible, when I learned something that is like, oh, my gosh, like that really helped me here, here, and here. Right? I teach it to somebody as fast as I can. I find somebody. I have even taught random people. I know that sounds stupid and weird, but I have literally, I've done it before, or I'll send a message to somebody and be like, "I know you're thinking about this at all, I just learned something cool, I just wanted to share," because frankly it's to be selfish. I want to share it with you, but I also want to make sure I remember it, and I will teach them what I just learned. I do over and over and over and over and over... What's cool about it is it's almost like you guys have seen The Five Minute Journal? I can't remember who it's by, but it's the five minute journal, and who is by actually? I can't remember ... Anyway. The five minute journal goes through and it makes you look at your day, it makes you go back and look, and kind of debrief. I can't think of the other word for it. Assess, take accountability for the things that you did in your day, and the things that you learned, and what was amazing, what was bad, how you're going to change it, how you're going to react. I try and treat this show like that. Does that make sense? When something amazing it going on in my life and I'm like oh, my gosh, that's crazy cool. I got to share that. Right? Then it becomes very, very easy for me to continually have podcast material. I don't know what two episodes from now is going to be, but I know it will be amazing, because I thought it was amazing, and because I get excited about it, because I'm obsessed about funnels and marketing it's going to be easy for me to talk about it, and it's going to be easy for me to tell a story around it. Does that make sense? You've got to develop this talent, this habit, okay? What was super cool was I was able to use very, very heavily when I was speaking this last weekend. I've shared with a few other people as well, so if you've heard this, I'm sorry, but I went through and I was on stage and I could tell very, very quickly that the stories that I was telling, I wasn't allowed to pitch, but I took the first half of my webinar script and I just took out the pitch and I pretty much did the exact same script. I still broke and rebuilt their belief patterns, and I know it worked because a ton of people came up afterwards. Actually, it's kind of funny, for the first 24 hours not a lot of people came up. For the second 24 hours I feel like it all hit their brains and they're like, wait a second, I get it. The next day it was like floods of people. I've never had that happened before, it was funny. I was like awe, cool. Anyway, I could tell I was speaking, I wasn't pitching, but I was definitely selling, I'm always selling. I'm selling through stories, very crafted stories to help break and rebuild the way they see the world and whats actually possible, you know what I mean? You obviously can use that for very bad things, but anyway. I was speaking though, and I was I could feel that the room, like a third to a half of the room was not with me. Because I've been practicing this as frequently as I have, right? I have an entire separate podcast show. We're at episode 60-something now, right? I'm about to cross 200 episodes of doing this, let alone the different events, let alone the different places I've spoken or taught, let alone the different coaching sessions. Pretty much all of Friday for me is coaching. My entire Friday, every week, I just coach 100s of people. I mean, it's the entire day. I've been doing for that over a year now, and I've had a lot of practice at it. When I was up there and I could feel that part of the room was not with me, because their eyes went down. They got distracted by what was on the table in front of them. I wasn't getting any more like oh, ah, like you would at Fourth of July, you know what I mean? I was able to see, I was a able to sense it. I don't know what it is guys, it's a sixth sense. You will develop it if you do what I'm telling and just start publishing, you will develop it. It will not happen for awhile, but you will develop it. I could feel that part of the room wasn't with me. One of the challenges that you have as an entrepreneur, one of the challenges that I run into, that everyone runs into. I'm no exception on the rule in this, when you've got a product that kicks butt, I know that the webinar that I'm selling, that the product that I'm selling right now, it's amazing. I know it's the best one that's out there right now. I know that there is nothing out there that it like it. I know that I am the only one that delivers it how I do with the most value. I am confident in that, but that's not what sells stuff, the message is what sells it. The sales message is a different thing than the actual product. It's the reason you can start selling without the product actually being done. I've been obsessing over the sales message. I've just barely finished the product that I've been selling, which is awesome. It's such a good feeling ... Anyway, what I've been doing is I've been going and I've been selling, selling, selling, selling. Selling like crazy, and when you have a product that's, follow with me. I know I'm kind of stumbling, but follow with me, I've got 15 billion thoughts all over the place. I'm trying to follow it and grab it. When you've got all these different ... Sorry, when you've got this amazing product, okay, I'm sure all of you guys have an amazing product, so why isn't literally everyone on the planet running out to buy it? I know we've already talked about sales message is what sells the product, however, there comes a point when you don't need to be tweaking as much of the sales message anymore as much as you need to be tweaking who's hearing it. Does that make sense? I know we've all heard the phrase, "Message to market match." 100%, totally with that, totally agree with that, obviously. I think one of the dangers we will fall into through as funnel hackers is we will continue to change, after awhile, I'm not saying not to, but change your product, change the sales message, tweak, tweak, tweak, tweak, tweak. I'm getting it to a point now with the level of obsession that I've been at, where I feel like it's not going to be so much tweaking the sales message anymore that's going to be doing it, I think I could shorten the sales message for my webinar right now. I think I could shorten it. I think it's a little long, but the actual message, I think it's spot on. I think my offer, there is a few things I could add to it to turn up the sexy just a little bit, and I think I know what they're going to be, but the next piece if really changing who is hearing it, right? Who I'm dropping it front of. Steven, why are you on this random rabbit, squirrel that's over on the side? You're talking about being on stage. Okay, here's why. I was on stage, and I was telling you that about half through I could tell they were with me, they were getting it, they were like, oh, my gosh. Remember I was pitching to MLM-ers. If you're not in MLM, that's fine. I'm just telling who I was speaking with, and I was speaking with them, there's 1000 people there, I show them the funnel stuff, and a lot of them have never seen this before, and they're like, "Holy crap." About half of them were freaking out, they were like, "Good grief, that's what you just did?" I was like, "Yeah, what's up? I don't know any of you guys, you all know each other though." Anyways, it was really cool. About the other half, though, weren't with me. From that I had two options. This decision happened in my head very quickly while I was up there. They gave me a tight 45 minutes to be up there and be speaking. I had a very tight timeline, and ... That was really fast for what I did up there. I had two options, through. Option number one was to just say, you know what? It's fine. If you don't resonate with what I'm saying you're not probably a good fit for this anyway. Does that makes sense? I wouldn't say that, but that would be my reasoning, but like you didn't resonate, that's fine. That's okay. You didn't resonate with the stories, you didn't resonate with the sales message, even though I'm not pitching, I'm definitely selling, and you didn't resonate, that's fine... Number two, though, the second option I have is the one I took, which was to grab another story that I have been practicing, because of all the publishing, because of the podcasts, because of all the stuff, I developed, right, that little sixth sense that I'm talking about and grab another story from my Quiver... Grab another story, grab another arrow from my Quiver and launch that story out there that I think fits who I saw who was also in the room. I was like, "Man, I didn't realize there would be this many of this kinds of demographic. This kind of psychographic, this kind of belief pattern. I didn't realize, I wish I would have known that before. Do you know what I mean? Your ability to adapt on the fly like that will very much depend on how much you've been publishing, how much you've been practicing telling the story. The first option I had was okay, that's fine. You didn't resonate with my message, that's cool. I think a lot to when I automate the webinar that that will be my reasoning, hey, look, you didn't resonate, that's fine, but I have a second option, which is the benefit of doing live webinars, which is the benefit of feeling like live is you get to feel that sixth sense, and you get to go out and you get to say, hey, look, let me launch this other story. Let me grab another arrow from my Quiver, and shoot it out there, and go is that going to stick? And it did, and I was able to grab a hug other portion of the room and it resonated with them. Does that make sense? I know I'm kind of all over the place with this, but I hope you understand what I'm saying. This is all very very connected. Your ability to tell story, do it repeatedly, have a lot of stories in your Quiver, and being able to sense when to grab. They're like weapons guys, you grab another story, boom, and you launch it out. You grab a different story, boom, you launch it out there, you're like oh, man, that one didn't hit. Boom, that one hit. I can tell, I'm reading their body language, they're jumping all over the place, they're clapping, they're screaming, whatever. The equivalence of that online, during a webinar, whatever... If you're not getting a lot of that feedback when you're selling your product it might be very well possible that they're not feeling that. You have two options, number one is to say, that's fine, and you just keep finding people that resonate with your current message. Number two, launch a second story and shoot it out there. Launch a second story, see if it sticks, and be like oh, that one didn't stick, boom, and you launch another one, and you launch another one, and you launch another one, and your ability to do it quickly will very much effect how well the rest of your funnel performs. Anyway, does that make sense? That was kind of long, roundabout way of saying all this guys, but I hope that makes sense, what I'm saying here. This was a pretty powerful thing for me to go through. I've done it on very micro scales, where there's maybe up to 60 people in a room. I've done that many times, where I can sense it, I can feel it in the room and be like they're not getting it, or be like you know what? Let's come up with a brand new analogy on the fly, or let's use one of their business, okay, let me weave a story in between there to help break and rebuild beliefs there. Your ability to tell story is marketing, and it is selling. I'm sorry, is marketing, not selling, it's face-to-face. Anyway, I hope that make sense, and I want you to, the takeaway from this episode ... I feel like I've been all over the place a little bit with these last few episodes, but I'm trying to distill down the things that I'm noticing. It's like I think we all have the bricks, what I'm trying to do is help you fill in the mortar, you know what I mean? The glue between them, and figure out how to do that stuff. Anyways, I'm trying to help you understand that the takeaway from this is that you have got to write out storylines of what's happening inside your life. You've got to. If you've got the gumption, which I hope that, if you don't have it, learn it. Just start publishing. Start publishing those storylines, and as you do it, I don't know somewhere around episode 30-ish, I started finding my voice. Then something else happened around episode 90. I don't know I've heard it from a lot of you guys, you felt it as well. There was this extra amount of, I don't know, glaze that my voice gained as I published. It was like this extra sizzle, and I think it was part of that sixth sense that started coming in... As I would start to say stuff it was almost like I would hear the audience reply with something, with the false believe that they were hearing, that they were giving up as an excuse, and I'd have a chance to react back and forth, boom, boom, boom, boom, back and forth, back and forth, as if you were in the room with me while I was doing these podcasts. Does that make sense? I hope that you're understanding what I'm saying here with this. This is super, super, super, super, powerful. I know I pound the story, I tell you guys get good at story, but the applications for it are all over the place. It's not just in publishing, not just in selling, but the ability to adapt on the fly. The ability to get new markets in, when Russell tells the story about, "Hey, I couldn't figure out how to sell Click Phones for awhile." He had to change the story. That's the major thing. When he changed the story and the offer, and he's tweaking it back and forth, boom, boom, back and forth, back and forth, which offer matches the story that I'm telling, that matches the person that's hearing it. It's really this three part series, right? Who's hearing it, what's the story that they're hearing, and you got to craft that, and then what's the offer? Then when you match those three together, that's where the magic happens. What I was feeling on the stage was the person who was in the room was not the person I was anticipating. Crap, my story's not right, which means my offer, even though I wasn't actually pitching, I was certainly selling though, I was still breaking and rebuilding the way they saw the world, wasn't correct. There was a mismatch. I felt the mismatch. It was like this three part mismatch. I got to come up with another way to say that. It's message to market match, yeah, but there is something, it's deeper than that. It was the thing that I start knowing, and feeling, and sensing, and I hope that you understand what I'm dropping out there with this, and start feeling that. Start asking yourself, okay, who am I actually doing the selling to? What's the story I'm using to gain their attention and break and rebuild their beliefs? Then number three, what's the offer? Where do I feel like that weak spot is? If you don't know what the weak spot is you are not pitching frequently enough. I'm telling you around episode 85-90ish, okay, that was a long time, that's when I started feeling it. You have got to have frequency with this thing. Frequency is far more important, in my opinion, than perfection in every single thing you say. I say too many ums, I say too many ahhs, I'm practicing storytelling, I'm practicing is ... Anyway hopefully this has been helpful to you guys. You know what? You might actually have an amazing offer, and my gut feeling is that you probably do, you probably know that it is amazing, and if you don't know that, get there. Okay? Oh, it's amazing! It's so cool! It's the best thing on the planet. I know I can defend it to death. You know what I mean? If you got that, boom, done, boom. My offer is there, there is a few more things I got to toss in there to make it extra sexy, in terms of my fast action bonus, but the offer, done. Okay, next piece. Message. What are my stories? My stories are set, my stories are freaking awesome. I know they're great, I feel it. Then what's the next thing though? It's who is hearing it, and I think I'm speaking to about half the people that I'm supposed to. I think the other half that are coming in, they're not going to resonate with my story, so number one, whatever, or number two fire a different story. That's the next piece I'm trying to figure out when it comes to my webinar funnel. That was a very long message, and hopefully it made sense, and hopefully you can see how it applies to what it is that you're doing, and think of it in these three stages, and as I've done that it's simplified, the entire process for me. It's all very much interconnected, it's all very much, and you will not do it without mat time. You will not do it without podcasting, or whatever it is. Publishing in general, you will not develop that kind of sixth sense without actively seeking to. It will just kind of happen one day you'll be like oh, crap. I felt, that was weird, you know? It's kind of cool when it happens though. All right guys, thanks so much for listening, I appreciate it. I've developed a whole bunch of other cool outros, and maybe I'll talk about that in the next episode coming up and why I did that. Anyways, thanks so much. Talk to you later. Bye. Hey, thanks for listening! Please, remember to rate and subscribe. Got a question you want answered live on the show? Head over to SalesFunnelRadio.com, and ask your question now.

Routinely, these are the most common ways we'll increase the perceived value of our offers... Hey, what's going on everyone? This is Steve Larson and you're listening to Sales of Funnel Radio. Welcome to Sales Funnel Radio where you will learn marketing strategies to grow your on-line business using today's best internet sales funnels. Now, here's your host, Steve Larson. What's going on everyone? I am a kid at heart. What can I say? I'm going to be that way on purpose till I die. Do not make me into an adult. Hey, all right it's like 10:00. I've got three nights left before I'm going to go fly to Dallas, which I am super excited about. I am going to speak at Danny Vega's and James Smiley's B2B Mastermind, which, I am super excited about. It will be awesome. But I am up tonight and I am thinking through like the different things I am going to give and offer there and I am pumped about it. Ultimately I am going to do the same to you guys ... You know, if you want it. It's almost sad, I am putting the slides together, I'm putting together what I am going to deliver and put up there. It will be a three hour presentation, which I am really excited about, be fun. Anyway, I am thinking through a lot of the different funnels that I have built over the last little while. I am way past 300 funnels built in the last year and half. I have no idea how many it is now. I mean, it's huge. Anyway, I lost count. I know that, like there is one project once that was 82 funnels alone. I mean so honestly it could be in the 400's. I have no idea. I know that it is a crap ton. I was thinking through all the funnels. It was actually a lot of fun. Anyway, I think it was two weeks ago, I built a membership funnel live. A lot of people don't know you can build member areas inside Click Funnels that are amazing and frankly I still think that it's the best even out of Kajabi even out of all the other member area places, I still think that the Click Funnels ones are the best because it is still geared toward you continuing to be able to sell more and more and more. There is a lot of stuff that you can do inside member areas to increase your revenue even inside the member area that I don't know that you can do inside of other places. Anyway, lot of fun stuff. Went great. So I build the member's area live. It was, we had about 35-ish people watch the entire four and half hours while I built it live. And it was really fun because they could get there and they could interact with me. I did that for a live webinar funnel probably about a month ago and I just built out the entire thing live again, which, is a lot of fun. And I am going to do it again. I thought I would invite you guys to come along and join if you want to. It's one of the things that I will be giving and offering over to this mastermind too, in Dallas, which I am really pumped about. The pressure is on though. Man, got three days. It will be awesome. Just want to make it awesome, so ... December 2nd, what I am going to be doing is I am going to be building an application funnel. A high ticket coaching application funnel. Could be a coaching funnel. Could be some kind of application funnel. Could be high ticket product funnel. Could be whatever, whatever it is where someone has got to send or submit in an application. I am going to be building that funnel type. I'll show you three different strategies I have used as well. It has been kind of fun. I launched one of these of my own about a week ago in a different industry and it's going really, really well. I was able to pioneer a few different things that I am going to show you guys and it's working. It's been so cool to see it work. Oh, my gosh. Stuff I've never seen and even know what to do before. Anyway, if you guys want to go and watch it live and participate and things like that. It'll be at SalesFunnelBroker.com/live. SalesFunnelBroker.com/live... That is where you can register. I set it up just like a webinar on Zoom, but you guys can be on there, live with me and actually ask questions as we go through the whole thing and it's a lot of fun. Last group, anyway I know they learned a lot. I learned a lot. It was a lot of fun. I build from literally the ground up. Start from absolutely scratch and just show a lot of my different design principles and strategies. Things that are really fast. I build the whole thing together usually ahead of time. Try to have some assets together so that I'm not just filling in the blanks with dummy texts and things like that. It's great. Anyway, so plan on about four hours if you guys want to come watch, it's Saturday morning usually starting about 8:00 in the morning. 8:00 or 9:00 something like that Mountain Standard Time. You guys can jump on and watch. If you are listening to this episode and it is past December 2nd, for you and I guess for everyone else. I am going to be restructuring Sales Funnel Broker as I've, as I've ... It's great. I've tried to make it as a cool resource, a place that people could just download cool funnels. Some of them for free, some of them for paid. Show some of my other resources I use as I, you know that I used to funnel build with, but I need to revamp it. You know. I launched that before I even started podcasting so, I mean it's been out there for like a year and half. There is a lot of stuff I got to go update. I've got some cool ideas for it. I'm going to be selling some more ... Okay, just think about this for a second. I have built a ton of sales funnels in the last year and a half alright and I built funnels well before working for Russell on WordPress, which is terrible in different ways. On my own with Click Funnels during and it's been awesome. But, there are repeatedly the same funnels that I build over and over and over again that just kill it. Some of them in no matter what industry and some of them in very specific industries. What I was thinking is I've been listing out this huge list of funnels that I build over and over and over again. Why would I not build them from ground up with you guys so you can see how to do it and then at the end I will sell the share funnels as well as the recording with it. As well as, I always make these really in depth PDF maps so you can see what is going on, on each page. Why I do what I do, where it's hooking into. The automation behind it. Is there any third party stuff. Am I hooking stuff up with Zappy or how do I? I mean all the stuff that I am doing. And I want to be able to do and deep dive those things with you guys so that you've got even more power behind you on building these things. Anyway that's what's been going on this last little bit. It's been a whole lot of fun. I have been building. I just built an application style funnel. That one took me a couple of weeks 'cause I had to go film stuff and anyway it's been, but it was a lot of fun. There is a new take on the application itself funnel that I haven't really put out there before and it's been awesome. I kind of made it up. It's been working and it's in a different industry. It's been awesome but, anyway, been cool. Anyway, bit of a plug there... Whatever it's blatant and I hope you guys join. Hey, so, what I want to talk through real quick is the application style funnel. All right and real quick, so I don't know wherever you are or whatever but if you want to draw a value ladder. Right. At the bottom of a value ladder, and if you guys have never drawn before or this is your first time on the episode, or whatever it is at the very bottom of, like, lets, so the very lowest step. Let's say if you drew three steps of some stairs. On the very first step there that's typically where we have like a lot of free shipping stuff there. Free stuff in general. Free, free, free, free, free. Like lots of free stuff. Somewhere, usually between the first and the second stair step, personally that's where I draw. Like I call it the money barrier. When you break the money barrier, that's when you actually start to sift out actual customers versus freeloaders. Okay? It's super important. Something you always want to do. I put out lots of content for free. But eventually I sift you guys out. Who is it that is actually willing to pay to play? Who is actually willing to pay to learn and actually run fast with the people who are sprinting into certain industries. You know what I mean? Like, you've got to do the same thing. Pump tons of free content out there or whatever it is and then eventually you've got to have this barrier where you charge someone some money. Right? Then typically in the middle of the value ladder what I do is have a $1000 to $2000 product. Somewhere in that area. Right? That kind of becomes the core of the business. That's actually where I start. I start. When I start at, I only have you know. I'm doing my best to have one value ladder at a time. I know I did an episode a little while ago on that, but I try and do one value ladder where I start in the middle of the value ladder. I actually don't start at the bottom. I don't start by giving away free plus shipping things or the little tiny front end products or the little tiny. I'll start by giving out free lots of content and publishing. But I actually don't start selling stuff, you know, I start with the $1000 to $2000 range in any business. Because, you know when I am consulting or my own self or whatever it is, because it does not take many $1000 to $2000 sales to make a dent in the wall. It does not take many $1000 to $2000 sales to give you awesome profit to dump back into ads. How many $7 products do you got to sale to actually make a profit? A ton. Right? I would rather the market tell me what to create on those front end products. I don't want to guess. That's super risky. Seen a lot of people waste a lot of time on lower front end products. They don't work. It's a huge shame. I mean cause you just wasted all that time. You know so, what I do is start with the middle of the value ladder and then what I do is I typically also. Number one, start in the middle. Number two I go to a high ticket product in the back end. I don't go to the front end yet. This is the order in which, what should I call it. This is the order to create products on the value ladder. This is the order to do it. That I've seen work the best that I've done many times. Number one I start in the middle. Number two, I go back to the high end stuff. At least $5000. Right? $10,000, $15,000, 25 grand, in that range. You know, at least 5k though. Okay I guarantee, I mean if you've got any value at all you've pumped into the market place you could charge five grand for an event and get a few people to come in. That's actually how Russell started by selling those events. It actually started in events. He did that. He sold an event for $5000 and got two people to pay and was like, "What the heck? That's so cool." Number one, start with the core, number two you do kind of the back end. Number three, that's when I start creating front end products. That's when you start creating your little $7 things. Your $27 things, your $50 your $100 things, maybe even up to $300 things. If you start by, you know it's funny when you read the book Dotcom Secrets a lot of times what it makes you think is that you need to start the creation for your business the order is to create them is that you start with those front end things and that's just not how you do it. If you do it that way you are guessing. It's a lot of volume you've got to go through to actually make that thing convert before you've got to keep tweaking it before it actually. I mean even Russell himself when we launched those when we launched our own funnels. Most of the time round one they are not usually not successful out of the gate. Okay. It's usually when we make the second tweak. The first tweak the second tweak that's when they get wildly profitable. And Russell is Russell Brunson. He's I ... Second to him I have probably built more funnels than anyone I know. Any guru I know. Anyone. Like period, but he's number one though. He's done it, way, more than I have. Does that make sense? Like that's crazy. Even for him. Okay. If you look at how click funnels did stuff as well. Click funnels started by selling $1000 product called Funnel Hacks. Then it went into events and higher ticket things in the background. And then started creating things like Dotcom Secrets and front end things and Funnel Swag and Frontal U and Frontal Graffiti and all these front end products that all lead into the same thing. Does that make sense? For whatever reason it gets like it's sexy in someones head to do it the other way around or we start there. Don't start there. Do that last. Do that last when, when ... 'Cause here's what is going to happen. When, you start selling $1000 product, when, you start selling something that is thousand bucks, right? Or $2000 or whatever it is. The core of your business. I'm not saying it has to be that. But it's got to be enough money where it doesn't take many of them to really make a dent. Right? ... Where, you can dump huge profits back into ads. Right? When you start doing that you are going to get feedback in the form of complaints. It's just part of it. I remember the first time that ever happened for me. I was like why the heck are you complaining about this? "I wish you did X, Y, and Z. I wish you did this. Blah. Wipe my butt." You know and I was like, "Oh, my gosh. Are you serious?" What's going to happen is you are going to start to get feedback in the form of complaints. Now it is your job as the entrepreneur to sift the complaints and you want to sift them into two different groups. You are going to sift the complaints number one into feedback for how to tweak your existing offer. Okay. You might be getting these complaints and you're like, "Crap". Wait they are right. I should change X, Y, and Z. I need to tweak this thing. All right. That is what Russell is doing. That is what he and I are doing. Typically, when we launch something and we've got to tweak it the first round or two we are listening to our customer feedback and we're like "Crap. Let's sift these things. Okay? Let's go and et's tweak the offer. Let's make it even better." Right? The second thing though. The second category you gotta look for is, is when you can sift these customer feedback items and their telling you what to go and create on the front or back end of your value ladder. They are letting you know. The market is telling what it is that you need to go and create. Okay? These front end products are being created by the customer who bought your middle tier product. That make sense? Let me say it again. Your front end products, typically the most successful ones I've ever seen. Typically, the ones, their being created third. The customer is telling you what they want you to create. They don't know they are doing that but that is what their doing. We're taking all those pieces of feedback and we're saying you know what? People wish they had shirts with our logo on it. Let's make Frontal Swag. You know what? People are telling us that they wish that they had something to help them write their copy. Front End Scripts. Right? We didn't start with front end products like that. We started with the mid and I personally do that as well. I start with the middle area of the value ladder at least $1000. When I get that core down when I get it converting. "Psssh." You've got yourself an ATM machine. You've got a cash machine... Then you make an application style form on the back end selling your one-on-one coaching, you're done for your stuff, your implementation styled products. Right? Don't put implementation styled products. Don't put coaching. Don't put one-on-one stuff in the core area. Don't put yourself in the fulfillment of the core of the value area. You put that in the back end. That is why I am going to build an application stype funnel with you guys. That's why I am doing that. If you want to come join me and watch me do it. Right. Get your questions answered then come watch. SalesFunnelBroker.com/live. You can watch the whole thing. I'll do the whole thing. You can watch for free. You know and follow along. You can do whatever you want anyway, but then I am also going to have for sale the actual funnel themselves as well as the training as well as a whole bunch of other stuff. It's just going to be awesome. Action sequences, a whole of bunch of other cool things I am going to toss in there for you. Then what I do is I build front end products. Front end funnels. Front end things that can with the only intent. You're not trying to make money on them. The only intent is to recoup ad costs and get customers for free so that anything they do on the middle of the value ladder and on the back of the value ladder is pure profit. Does that make sense? This is like value ladder strategy and it always irks me just a little bit when I see someone. I'm like no. Don't start with the front end product. I'm not telling you, you can't make money but, you gotta sale a crap load of those things to make a difference in your wallet. I got so animated I just threw my pen. Oh, almost landed in the trash can. Anyway, so hopefully that helps. That is all I am trying to say with this whole thing. I've built a live webinar funnel, live. I built the membership area funnel, live and a lot of cool strategies that showed how to use them in affiliate areas too, which is crazy cool. Then I am going to do an application style funnel as well. All of these are going to be available shortly on SalesFunnelBroker.com. If you want it, go check it out. I've got three requests in a single hour to build someones funnel. There is no way I can handle it out. There is no way I am going to try to. Honestly, it would be a disservice if I did try to. It'd be a disservice to all the people that I said. You know that I would say yes to. The way that I am getting around it is still building the kick butt totally rockin' funnels that I do know how to build but do it live with you guys in a template where can go do the same thing you are trying to do with it. You know what I mean? That's why I am trying to do these things live. For a while, I've got a huge list of funnels guys. You guys have join me for a while. I'm. If you want to keep going back to SalesFunnelBroker.com/live periodically, I'm just going to be building funnels live for quite a while. You guys can still come in. You can still grab them. I am going to be updating a lot of cool stuff and sharing things. It's the latest and greatest. Things that. Stuff that I know no one else is doing. Because we either pioneered it or I made it up or I figured it out or we made it up. Or whatever it is. Anyway, I'm excited. If you want to join you can. Please adhere to funnel strategy that we know works the best. Or I should say value ladder strategy. This is the order to build products on a value ladder. Number one mid tier, not front end. Mid tier, mid product, mid priced at least thousand bucks. Number two, go towards the back of the value ladder. Go at least $5000 on something. Coaching and event. Some kind of done for you application. Some kind of implementation. That is where we do that, higher up on the value ladder not towards the bottom. Number three, then we do the actual market driven front end products. Not from us with the sole intent to recoup ad costs. Anyway, I feel like the last few episodes for me have been a lot of techno babbled styled stuff. But I feel like ... Anyway, I hope you guys feel and sense that I am just trying to drop gold. These are the things that I do. Things that we know. Things that I have been doing for a long time and I just. Anyway, it blows me away when someones like "Oh yeah, I've got all these front end products and they are doing well, but, I'm not making any money." It's like, "Duh." 'Cause you're not supposed to make money with that stuff. That's supposed to give your customers for free. What's your actual business? What's the core? What's the mid tier product? What's the back end? Anyway, so hopefully this has been helpful. Hopefully these episodes have been great. I've kind of done some funnel deep dives lately. I've got some cool plans for this podcast coming as well. I am excited for you guys to be part of it and. Anyway if you've gotten any value at all. I love hearing that. It kind of keeps me going. Keeps me juiced. Because each one of these episodes honestly takes me in full after creating it, after putting it all together about an hour and half to two hours per episode. It's nice to hear ever once in a while, like a little shout out. I love it. Super nice. If you guys want to go to iTunes. Please rate the podcast. Give a rating. A love the written reviews. That helps me like crazy. That helps everyone else trying to find this kind of information as well. Anyway, it has been great. Last little shout out. If you guys want to join with me and dive into this whole thing. Even if you don't have a Click Funnels account, you can still watch. It's just a Zoom link so you can do live Q & A with me with everyone else and we'll build this whole thing together. And it's going to be awesome and I'm going to keep doing that for a while. Mostly 'cause I love building funnels. Some of them are funnels I need to build anyway, personally. I just thought I would include you in the journey. Go to SalesFunnelBroker.com/live and you can check that on out. Anyway you guys are all awesome and I will talk to you later. Bye. Thanks for listening to Sales Funnel Radio. Please remember to subscribe and leave feedback. Want to get on of today's best internet sales funnel for free? Go to SalesFunnelBroker.com/freefunnels to download your prebuilt sales funnel today.