Ep. 98 How to Sell Something Intangible

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Today I’m going to talk to you about how to sell something that is intangible. So a lot of us work in the personal development space, mindset, we work in spirituality, relationships, things that, you know, you’re not selling mugs or lipstick or websites, or things that people can either smell, taste, hear, touch, or at least digitally see.

So when you’re selling something really intangible, it can be very hard to sell the value of that. It’s also hard for the person to really measure whether or not it worked. And especially as you go to write sales copy, it just, you know, it can easily fall flat.

So I have used a very classic example about making something intangible tangible. Many of you have probably heard me use this example. I will say it again, but I will actually give you a new example today to kind of help you walk through the process of how you think about it, so that you can come up with something.

So the classic example that I always use has to do with my two clients who are in the makeup space. But they’re really in the female empowerment space, so they wanted to do a challenge, they wanted to build their list, and they really wanted to focus on women feeling more confident, something very intangible. So what we did was we made the red lip challenge, and the idea behind this was that women typically don’t wear red lipstick, you know, unless they’re very confident, because red lipstick is very bold, it makes women feel like they’re standing out, and they’re uncomfortable. And typically a woman who is not confident in herself is probably going to avoid attention getting lipstick, like red lipstick. So if you were to imagine someone going from being afraid to loving and wearing a bright red lipstick, would you say that that was a manifestation of an increase in confidence and empowerment? And the answer is yes.

So that’s a very tangible action they can, you know, pick out their red tone for their skin, they can wear their lipstick, they can share it on social media, and they have actions that really point to the fact that they are working towards building their confidence.

Okay, so kind of how do you get there from here is really the question. So again, I’m coaching in our program Launch Gorgeous Lite, and I was working with someone who said that they wanted to do a workshop at getting better at your intuition. Okay, intuition is intangible and how are you going to know that you’re better at intuition. So I asked her, “What are some examples? Some tangible sort of manifestations of someone who has good intuition? Someone who has arrived at that result?”
Okay, so these were some things I thought of. You can foresee trouble in relationships before anything is spoken. So it’s almost like this sort of seeing eye idea. You can make better and stronger decisions that you don’t regret because you’re really in touch with yourself and your true desires. So you’re not making bad decisions because you’re following somebody else’s ideas. So that’s another one. A third one would be, maybe you’re a better partner or parent because you can read between the lines. So you’re kid is saying, you say, “How was school?” and they say, “Oh fine.” But you really know based on their body language and your intuition that they’re not fine and this is what’s going on. And you can kind of read between the lines and get at the root of the issue.

So here are three more tangible examples that show someone has good intuition. So when you’re thinking about something intangible, yeah, something intangible, ask yourself what are some examples of the manifestation of the result that you’re selling.

Okay, the next thing you need to do is think about a common theme that runs through these examples. So is there any pattern, is there any theme, is there any thread of similarity between these examples that I gave that we can kind of use? And to me, for someone who can foresee trouble before it’s coming, who can make decisions for themselves that they don’t regret, because they understand their true desires, and someone who can be a better parent because they are reading between the kids’ lines of what they are saying, the common theme is that they see and understand things that are unseen or unspoken. And that to me is the theme, learning to see and understand things that are unseen or unspoken.

So that to me is sort of the crux of good intuition, so instead of doing a workshop where you’re saying something like, “Learn how to have better intuition.” Or “The better intuition workshop.” which feels kind of, a little nebulous, maybe you call the workshop “Unspoken”. Which again, if you listened to my last episode about how to get good at writing hooks, I’m curious right. Unspoken, a workshop called unspoken, is it a silent workshop? I need to read more.

So “Unspoken: the workshop that teaches you to read between the lines with anyone.” Now we’ve taken something that’s kind of intangible and almost turned it into a skill, right. So if I say, “Hey, this is a paid workshop, it’s called unspoken, it teaches you to read between the lines with anyone, and I’m going to give you 5 steps to building your intuition so that you can foresee trouble in relationships before it happens, make better personal decisions that you don’t regret, understand your family members more completely when they give you one word answers.” Now it’s incredibly like, oh my gosh, I can see how this skill when learned will be applicable in my everyday life, in real life situations. That I can imagine.

So that is sort of the process of how I would help you think about something intangible. Right, you think about the result, you think about the person who actually has the result that you’re selling, you kind of come up with a couple of examples, you look for a common theme, and in this case I turned intuition almost into a skill, a more like, you know, hard knock skill that you can really be like, “Ooh, I have that skill.” And then I showed through some bullet points the real life examples of how that’s going to manifest when you have that skill. And that is essentially my formula for how to sell something that’s largely intangible and hard to communicate.

Appreciate you all, talk to you soon.

Ep. 96 Four Crucial Touchpoints For Your Customer

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Hi everyone, this is Julie. Welcome back to the Create Your Laptop Life podcast. Today I want to talk about the four most critical touchpoints you need to make with your customer when they become a customer.

So a lot of us, you know, in marketing we get excited about marketing and we forget that marketing actually drips into delivery and the better you are at delivering a great experience the better you are at delivering what you say you’re going to deliver, the more likely they are to buy in the future, the more likely they are to give great testimonials, and the more likely they are to share with their friends. So there are four key things you have to think about when someone becomes a customer. And this is something I teach a lot of people.

And so the first is the order confirmation form. And this is a form that, you know, is a page in the funnel that a lot of people don’t pay any attention to. It’s the page that happens after they check out, right. So we spend all this time on the sales page and we spend all this time on the order form, and then it’s the order confirmation form and it’s like “Meh, thanks. Check your email, blah blah blah”, right. But you have such an incredible opportunity on that page to actually create a customer for life.

Does that mean a video? Does that mean help getting started? Does that mean an important next step? What is it that you’re going to tell them on that order confirmation form? And if there is at all, any confusion or any complexity to how to how they get access to what they just purchased, it’s even more important that you have that order confirmation form really dialed in.

So we actually just redid our order confirmation form on or FG funnels to really kind of create that important touchpoint for people who just signed up for our software. And so if you sign up for FG funnels you will see the order confirmation page has a lot of information on it and it actually gets started with your onboarding, and set up of your account right then and there.

So go through all of your funnels and offers and look at that order confirmation page. What’s the very first thing that they see after they make a purchase and how can you optimize that to make sure that they don’t have buyer’s remorse, that they feel excited about their purchase, and that you get a connection point in.

The second crucial touchpoint that you cannot forget is the fulfillment email. This is the email that fires, that acts as your receipt. Now remember, we’re always, as marketers, battling open rates on email, right. And we’re lucky if we get 20%, and we’re thrilled if we get 30%, but there are several emails that get higher than 30% consistently and the fulfillment email is one of those.

And so you’re going to get 50, 60, all the way up to 90% open rates on a fulfillment email, because people are looking for that critical information about what to do next. So don’t waste the opportunity to really create rapport. So if you have a fulfillment email, great. Make sure you put all of the really pertinent information right there, but make sure you think about what can you from a conversational standpoint, from a marketing standpoint, can you put in that email knowing that it is going to get opened and read?

The third incredibly crucial touchpoint, when you are selling to a customer, is that first interaction with your product. So if we are talking about a course or a coaching program or anything that is digital, it is going to be that first lecture. So, you know, just to give you some tangible examples, if you sign up for Course Chemist, you’re going to get a “Welcome to Course Chemist”, which is going to be sort of explaining how the program works and what you can expect. If you sign up for something like Digital Insiders, which is a mastermind, you’re going to get an email that gives you all kinds of important instructions on how to get in touch with the coaches and how to get into the Facebook group.

So that first lecture, that first sort of touch point, whether it’s with a human being, whether it’s with a member’s area, or wherever it happens to be, you want to make sure that that also has that human element and that rapport building.

So we’ve talked about the order confirmation form, the fulfillment email, and that first lecture. The last crucial touchpoint has to do with wherever that customer is hanging out once they become your customer. For most of you it is a Facebook group. Now for some of you it might be a Slack channel, it may be a Voxer group, it may be on Zoom, but for the majority of you you’re going to have Facebook groups. You should always have a pinned announcement welcome post in your Facebook group that is that orienting post, so that when they jump into a community that they haven’t been a part of, they’re going to feel like, “okay, I know what to do”.

Now, these onboarding elements may seem obvious, but when you’re in the middle of building out a launch and you’re marketing, a lot of these things kind of get left by the wayside, just because you’re so busy making sure the order form works, and making sure, you know, the emails fire right, and it’s very easy to skip over these things. But these are the things that actually make a difference.

And you know I just came back from Disney World and I was reminded of this idea of these details because… when you go to Disney World, and you go into the Nemo ride, right, even the queue, even the line, even the little like sort of railings that you walk and kind of weave in and out of, are themed, right? It’s these very small, subtle details that actually is what makes Disney, Disney.

So you’re in the Nemo queue, and the lights are blue and it feels like you’re underwater, and the railings look like rusted old pipes that, you know, from a shipwreck, and they look like they have seaweed on them. And that’s the difference between that, versus a ride where you’re just kind of standing out in the heat of the sun and everything is just metal and, you know, there’s no thought to detail.

And if you look at, kind of, the empire that Disney is, and how much more it can command in pricing and what people are willing to pay versus just, you know, a country fair or your local theme park, the details that are small are actually the things that make the most difference.

So as you’re going through your onboarding process, think about those four crucial touchpoints, right. The order confirmation page, the fulfillment email, that first lecture, and that pinned post in the Facebook group, and ask how you can make it more like the way Disney would do it. And watch as your customers feel really happy and proud that they bought what they bought from you, how they feel accepted and welcomed and cared for, and what that actually does to your business bottom line. Thanks guys, talk to you soon.

Ep. 95 The Difference Between Group Coaching + A Mastermind

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Hey everyone, Julie here. And today I want to talk to you about the differences between a group coaching program and a mastermind and how to tell which one would be best for you.

So I have run both and continue to run both group coaching programs and masterminds. And I believe that the terms are very interchangeable as they are used in everyday vernacular, but I see them quite differently. And I think that these differences are, you know, important enough to help you really dial in what it is you’re looking for, from a lifestyle perspective, and from an offer container perspective.

So let’s start with a group coaching program. Now, a group coaching program has a start and end date. And it is usually surrounding one particular sort of objective, that objective could be large, it could include a lot of other things. So for example, you could have a group coaching program that would help people get to, you know, $100,000 in sales, and maybe that would be a one year group program, and you work through and so that would be sort of a big general group program.

But more often than not, the group programs I see that work really well are a little bit shorter in duration, you know, usually three months or six months, and they surround one particular strategy or objective that you’re trying to do in your business. And the reason why group coaching programs are so awesome is that, number one, they have an end date. So if you ever get a cohort, or a group that you’re not super excited about, or that the energy is not quite there, then you can end that group. And then you can start another one. The second reason why group programs are awesome is that they because of that start and end date, they also have some built in scarcity and urgency built in. Scarcity is usually around the limited number of seats available in a group program. And then the urgency is that you start at a given time.

Now group programs can be rolling admission. So you can have a group program that sort of open all the time and people join whenever they want, you do lose some of the scarcity and urgency in that but you could, you know, sort of overcome that with sales calls and applications and, you know, make it a little hard for people to join and then get people in. The danger, I think, with the ongoing group coaching programs that that don’t have a start and stop is that I noticed that people, the owners, or the head of the program can sometimes get really tired of it. Because it’s exhausting to keep up a dynamic in the group. And then you have new people. And sometimes if the screening or the salesperson isn’t super clear, you can get people in the group that aren’t a good fit and can drag the group down. And so those evergreen group programs are a little bit more complicated. And so this is why usually, for someone who’s just starting out, transitioning from one to one to one to many, I really recommend live programs that have that start and end date.

So that’s a group coaching program. Now a mastermind is different, a mastermind can be a set point in time, right, it can be for one particular season. But the idea behind a mastermind is that you’re pulling people together, who are going to come together for the sake of helping each other make your business better. And so there’s a real group dynamic, which means it’s a little bit more like hosting a party, you want to know who to invite, you want to make sure everyone’s having a good time, you kind of want to like work with a room and introduce people, there’s a lot more relational dynamics in connecting going on. And if you think of this as kind of like a spider web, a mastermind is a very intricate web of all these different dynamic relationships, almost kind of creating this tapestry or this net. Whereas a group coaching program, it’s more vertical, you know, that each person coming in is really connecting to the leader and or the coach. And that’s really what they’re paying for. And so that’s sort of kind of how that all how that all functions.

And so in a mastermind, you get the added benefit of that group dynamic, you also get the added responsibility of that group dynamic, because you want to avoid cliques, you want to avoid drama, you know, you want to kind of keep the group curated in such a way that you don’t have one, you know, idiot who’s you know, drunk in the corner causing a scene, you know, kind of using that party analogy.

And so a mastermind has usually, you know, prerequisites and requirements for entry, and it has that sense of permanency. So the two examples that I can give you right now are Launch Gorgeous, is a classic group coaching program. It starts and stops, it runs twice a year. It’s three months, there’s that built in scarcity and urgency getting people into the group working in the program. And of course, there’s a lot of great relationships in the group program, but really people are joining to get the strategy, the results and the coaching that Funnel Gorgeous provides for that particular program. That’s a three month program and it runs at $3,000.

The mastermind that I currently run is Digital Insiders, this has been an operation as an evergreen ongoing mastermind for four years, it is a much higher ticket program, it is much more labor intensive program than Launch Gorgeous, I actively spend about 30 hours a week, you know, working with people in the group and creating that environment. So it’s, it’s almost residential, and it’s feel people come to move in, you know, to the mastermind to get to know people. There is a coaching program component in Digital Insider. So, I whenever I’m talking about it, I say to people, you know, this is a mastermind, but there is a coaching program layered on top of it. And so in that regard, I’ve added a lot of those, you know, coaching components.

So, if you’re the kind of personality of someone who loves to loves new ideas, and new projects, a group program is going to be a better option for you. Because you’re going to have that start and stop, you’re going to have the shorter time period, you’re going to get fresh new people. If you’re the kind of person who loves to create community, you love to nurture relationships, you love to kind of create that sense of, you know, place for people, and you love making introductions, hosting dinners, you know, just like that sort of host mentality a mastermind is going to be something you’re more attracted to. But from a bandwidth perspective, mastermind is much, much more labor intensive than a group coaching program.

Now, both are very profitable types of programs to run, they are not infinitely scalable, the way courses and memberships are, but they can generate tremendous amounts of revenue. Our Launch Gorgeous program generates anywhere between three to three and $500,000 every time we run it. So if you kind of do the math, and you were running a you know that program twice a year, you could run a million dollar business with just two three month, programs a year, the mastermind right now, my mastermind is $25,000 for the year and has a max of 100 participants at any given time. And so that’s gonna run at about a $2 million a year business.

That business though is much more expensive, because we have two weeks of in person events, I have coaches on staff that I’m paying, you know, a good amount of money to. And so that has a lot more labor costs than the Launch Gorgeous program, which you know, is shorter in duration. So I hope that gives you kind of some idea of the differences between them. And really, when you’re looking at the core result or the problem that you’re trying to solve, there are problems that are big and complex and need a lot of time and energy and space and a mastermind might be a better place for those problems to get solved.

And then there are problems that are very specific or problems that have very clear start and stops and milestones in which a group coaching program might be better. So I hope that helps. And I appreciate you all and I’ll talk to you soon.