Posted by: Daniel Levis
August 22, 2007
Issue #210

Teleseminar Profit Secrets

– REVEALED!

In this issue:

• The case for teleseminars  …
• How teleseminars can simultaneously impact your most important business metrics  …
• What makes a great call?
• And more!

Dear Business Builder,

Last week I wrapped up my 9 week Bootstrap Money Makers teleseminar training series, and I’m reflecting on the lessons learned  …

Since you may be considering putting on your own teleseminar or webinar – or may be involved in helping your clients to do so – I thought you might benefit from getting a behind the scenes look.

No matter what you sell, the creative use of these little babies can do wonders for building your business … padding your bank account … and bringing you closer to your customers. To put some context around the discussion, let me begin by telling you the business model behind Bootstrap Money Makers  …

Bootstrap Money Makers was a series of 9 calls, featuring rags to riches entrepreneurs facing a challenge. And the challenge was this: What would you do now if your assets were stripped … your lists and products destroyed … and your notoriety erased? And all you had were your wits, living expenses for one month, and $1,000 in seed capital to get back on your feet? What would you do? You can see the sales page, and grab a copy of the call recordings and transcripts here.

The calls were free to attend, but to receive the recordings and transcripts of the calls required a small investment of $77 to $127, depending on which option you selected.

And at the end of each call, there was an offer to purchase additional training materials.

The case for teleseminars

Here were my goals when I was planning the event:

• I wanted to give more value to the people on my list, thereby increasing their responsiveness to future offers  …
• I wanted to increase the frequency and dollar value of back end sales made to my list  …
• I wanted to grow my list  …
• I wanted additional products to sell to my list, and to use to fund external lead generation activities  …
• I wanted to get to know my list better …

Phew! That’s a pretty rich menu to chow down on all at once. See anything succulent? You do?

Good, then this is going to be time well spent, because looking back on this series it delivered in spades on every one of those goals.

Let’s take a quick look at how the series delivered on each one  …

How teleseminars
can simultaneously impact
some of your most important
business metrics  …

Increasing Value Delivered – Coming up with a steady stream of attractions for your list to devour, while at the same time maximizing revenue is a challenge. I was already delivering a weekly advertorial style newsletter, and a weekly promotion. I needed to up the ante, and here was a way to get other people to create a steady stream of relevant, interesting content for me – for FREE!

Not only that, since it was a theme-based series, once a couple of them were out of the way, they just weren’t that much work – just a few extra hours each week. The series was appreciated, and did indeed increase the responsiveness of the list.

Increasing The Frequency and Dollar Value of Back End Sales – Prior to implementing the Bootstrap Money Makers series, and building teleseminars into my business, it was a real challenge to increase the frequency of purchase with the quick and dirty approach of writing a newsletter with imbedded revenue generating links and one purely promotional e-mail each week. And previous surveys told me that with this schedule, I was on the verge of sending too many promotions, thereby desensitizing the list.

Creating a series of teleseminars gave me an excuse to touch the list more frequently, potentially without penalty. Each week I sent out an agenda informing people of what the specifics of the call would be, a reminder the day of the call, and at least one follow-up after the call was complete. And of course, each one of these e-mails contained at least one “money link”.

So instead of hitting the list just twice a week, I was now sending four or five e-mails per week. Sure enough, I was able to do this with impunity. And it did indeed increase purchase frequency. Each week, a steady stream of members upgraded to VIP status by investing in the call recordings and transcripts.

Not only was I able to dramatically increase the frequency of purchase, I enjoyed a substantial increase in the average sale value as well. The reason? Because when done right, verbal communication is a much stronger medium of persuasion than print …

At the end of each call we were able to sell mid-ticket items with a conversion rate as high as 33%, approximately 10 times higher than what you might expect with straight text. Even when you discount that multiple by about half, owing to the increased difficulty in actually getting people to consume your sales message, you still have a juicy lift.

A HOT Source of New Leads – A teleseminar series like this is a great way to grow your list. Each of the contributors to the series promoted it to their lists, and as a result, I was able to grow my list by nearly 10% while actually getting paid handsomely to do it. It sure beats paying Google a buck or more per name, and the leads are better.

The Lazy Man’s Way to Develop Products – What a great way to develop products and get paid for them before you even create them. Since I was pre-selling the recordings and transcripts of the series before it was complete, all of the event costs were covered ten-fold before the bills even arrived. Now that the series is over, I can sell the package again and again for years as a back end product. And I can break it up into pieces and use them as low ticket items to fund lead generation activities.

A Priceless Laboratory of Persuasion – All of the aforementioned benefits of structuring promotions like this are great, but even more valuable was what I learned about my market as a result of doing it.

As much as I would have loved to do more split testing during this event, I only tested one thing, and that was my squeeze page. A squeeze page may not sound like that big of a deal but it is crucial to a campaign like this. My first version was a typical squeeze page like I’m sure you’ve seen, with a headline, a little bit of sub-head copy, and some bullets.

The second version was a much shorter, condensed version – just a pre-head, headline, and two lines of copy. The copy on this second version was so short that the page barely scrolled, and the data fields were clearly visible above the fold. The short copy version (below) delivered almost double the response of the longer version, yielding an average opt in rate of 57%.

That’s twice as many leads, twice as many front-end sales, and twice as many back end sales, all from one little test.

Immediately after opting in on this page, the subscriber is given an opportunity to purchase the call recordings at a very attractive pre-release price. About 5.7% of the people that opted in upgraded to VIP membership.

Another extremely valuable byproduct of doing a theme-based series like this and collecting feedback from your target market is the wealth of knowledge you gain about what works and what doesn’t on the actual calls.

At the beginning of each call, I would announce a surprise bonus gift and promise to tell attendees how they could get it at the end of the call. To obtain the gift, I asked everyone to submit feedback about the call, and in return, I would send them the free gift.

And then after the call I would compare the sales results from the end of call offer with these comments, and the content of the call. This proved to be a very enlightening exercise.

Here’s what I discovered …

Almost all of the comments were positive. There were no more than a handful of negative comments about the quality of the content delivered on these calls. And exactly two people complained about being “sold” something at the end of the calls. Without exception, each speaker scored high marks in terms of content.

What was interesting though was that scoring high marks in terms of the quality of information delivered didn’t necessarily translate into high sales at the end of the call. The divergence in sales was astronomical. The highest selling call, outsold the lowest selling call by a factor of 16 … That’s SIXTEEN TIMES MORE SALES! And that’s not because of a difference in price point. Most of the offers where very similar in terms of price …

Can you imagine how much value there is in having the sales data, the audience feedback, and the recordings of the calls to study and dissect? I can tell you, it is HUGE! It’s like having x-ray vision into the collective psyche of the audience, and being able to piece together the elements that made the super successful calls successful, so that you can duplicate those elements in future calls.

What makes a great call?

Let me tell you a few of my general observations. These can be applied to any product or service you need to sell.

Here they are:

• The big selling call was much more than an hour of useful information followed by a special offer. It was actually two presentations rolled into one. Each piece of information was both useful, and delivered in such a way as to draw the audience to a very specific conclusion that supported the sale … either knocking down an objection … challenging an obstructing belief that stood in the way of the sale … or cleverly setting up some feature of the yet undisclosed product.
• In the big selling call, each point was made in the form of a story, and each story tied back very closely to the main theme of the series, which is in itself a story. If you look closely at the Bootstrap Money Makers theme, you’ll see that it is an archetypical story. It is the story of the hero’s journey — a story that has been told and retold a million times throughout history and that we all grew up with. David and Goliath, Superman, Star Wars, and just about every Western that ever came out of Hollywood is a story of a hero’s journey from humiliating defeat to triumphant victory. These stories are full of psychological leverage. They are mesmerizing, because when people are exposed to them, they identify with the hero, and project themselves into the story. On the winning call, each teaching point was a story, and each story was related back to the hero’s journey from “rags to riches”, complete with a “magic pill” that made the difference.
• On the big selling call, the offer took full advantage of multiple layers of psychological leverage, utilizing urgency, scarcity, and reduction to stimulate sales. Bonus material was only available to a limited number of buyers, the special pricing was only available for a limited time, and a three-pay option was provided. This was the only call to combine all three of these elements.
• The big selling call had one central overriding benefit that was reinforced throughout the entire call. This one benefit was referred to by almost everyone who submitted feedback to the call. The big selling call was not the only one to refer to this benefit. It was however, the only one to repeatedly tie each point back to this one particular benefit in some way. It was the only one to bring this benefit to life in teaching stories. And it was the only one that turned this benefit into a magic pill that spelled the difference between rags and riches.

By now you’re probably wondering what this hot button is? It is simply this: To make money teaching what you love. Of course the call had plenty of practical, step-by-step instruction. It was a realistic plan for making real money in 30 days or less. But what got people “in heat” for the offer was the idea that not only should they teach what they love, but that they must teach what they love to be successful. That was the magic pill.

A teleseminar that sells is very much like an advertorial, where you carefully mix selling appeals with useful information. The idea is to create a subtle reciprocal obligation on the part of your prospect … demonstrate your expertise and credibility in a very tangible way … and create an intense desire for the rest of the story.

I hope you found this little post-series analysis helpful. Teleseminars really are a great way to give your customers and prospects more value … increase the frequency and dollar amount of back end sales … grow the front end of your business with fresh new prospects … and develop new products quickly and easily.

They’re most definitely worth the effort.

Until next time, Good Selling!

Daniel Levis
Editor, The Web Marketing Advisor
THE TOTAL PACKAGE™

P.S. For the next week or so while the CDs are being mastered, you can snag recordings and transcripts of the Bootstrap Money Makers training series – plus $581 in additional free bonus gifts – at an obscenely low pre-release price. Click here for the exciting details.

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1 Comment »

1. Comment by scott — August 22, 2007 @ 7:11 pm

   Daniel,

   This issue is worth untold google wealth.

   Thanks. Seriously.