6 Figures in 60 Minutes
Plus something even better…
It worked.
I got the text a week before my talk - “You want to sell something?”. Uh… yes. But that meant throwing the presentation I was going to do out the window - and starting from scratch.
Plus, what was I going to sell?
I do what I always do in this situation - I take inventory.
First, how much time would I have to make the pitch? My presentation was 60 minutes long, and it couldn’t all be pitch. In fact, most of it had to be content if I wanted to deliver on what was promised.
I ball-parked 10 minutes - at most - to sell.
Second, context. What is unique about this audience that if I could custom make an offer for it…
would make it the perfect audience-to-offer match?
The audience was mostly killers. Pretty much everyone in there had made at least 6 figures in their business and most had made 7 figures or more.
You may think this makes the audience easier to sell to.
Wrong.
Beginners are easiest to sell to - they are at the start of the journey, they are thirstiest for results and most eager to put the work in to change their skills.
Third, deliverables. What could I possibly sell to make this a no-brainer? When you don’t have much time to pitch, you really have to overdo the offer so, at a glance, someone just GETS how incredible it is.
This almost always means sacrifice on your part -
Creating something that is costly to fulfill.
But this is how the big bucks get made by creatively solving hard problems. Here is what I knew - if I could get this audience to buy:
It would be talked about by influential people. Good for my brand. Could help me grow my social media. Could land referrals.
Strategic byproducts. A lot of the big launches I’m famous for came about indirectly - through a consulting client, from a small win in another deal that parlayed to a bigger deal, etc. Even if I cut myself to the bone on the offer, could I make it up over the client journey?
It could be a lot of money. Yes, hard earned money. But a big pile of it nonetheless.
So I went to work. I wrote a list of all the things I could put into the offer.
Specifically I was searching for things that:
Had a high retail price.
Easy to explain.
Could be “set up” in the presentation.
Example - my consulting is $3500 an hour. If I sold something under the retail price of this one fulfillable then it would be an incredible deal.
Plus, it would be easy to explain - “I gave you general principles today but what makes the most difference is how they are applied specifically in your business. My eyes on your stuff are the best eyes you could have…”.
Also, it would be easy to “set up” in the presentation. I could show who has paid me for this consulting. I could use it as teaching moments - “I was consulting with a client one day when…”. And most important - I could create this feeling in my presentation:
I just have to talk to this guy. I need more of what he knows.
Which was a big part of my presentation - to demonstrate that what I was to share was only a fraction of what I could share.
I gave as much of what I could give in the time I had, but it was clear it was only a small part of all the total knowledge I had on the subject.
This is a great selling strategy by the way…
Because you can give a ton of value while still creating demand.
You can go narrow on a topic, give the best presentation anyone has ever seen on the topic - then zoom it out and show how it fits into a bigger picture which you can also help with.
I ended up stacking several deliverables with real retail prices that totaled way over the price I was asking for my offer.
The fulfillment is going to be tricky. I could regret this later - which the audience could clearly see. That’s what makes a great offer - when they feel you’re insane for taking the risk to even make it.
I justified the risk:
Deal flow. The people who pay you money are the easiest to continue to pay you money. I might only end up with razor thin margins on this deal but I’m digging my well in the future before I get thirsty.
Speaking. Most of these folks do events. The easiest way to get booked to speak at an event is to speak at another event. Not useful for you if you’re just getting starting, but once you get on a stage and show you can deliver - other people ask you to be on their stages. And you want to be on stages. The hottest leads you will ever get in your life is from live events.
Podcasts. Which are also some of the highest quality leads. Most of these buyers I knew had podcasts, and I now can get shortlisted to be on their podcasts.
Affiliates. About once every five years I stumble upon an opportunity that I, more than anyone else in the world, know how to leverage. When I hit that opportunity, I aggressively work potential affiliates to promote it. And then we set another record.
Partnerships. Which are the best of all. If I can find someone who has an incredible offer, I can make a deal to be the marketing arm for them. No one company can do everything - traffic, conversion and fulfillment. It’s when you can take a great offer, put it with a great traffic source (affiliates) and then have someone live in conversion (me) is when you make the most money.
Plus, if nothing else it can help my social media.
So how did it do?
It crushed. Closed over 30% of the room on a $3,000 offer. Even better, people loved how I sold them. That’s a lesson in itself - you can make people happy to be pitched.
Even a lot of the non-buyers of this particular offer came up to me and I can sense they were trying to find other ways to pay me money.
(A lot of success, by the way, has a lagging indicator. Meaning you do the exact best right thing today but you aren’t aware of it until the distant future when it finally pays off.)
I even had a guy I had done business with off and on throughout the years come up and say: “Can I get 40 of these for my clients?” That’s a $120,000 deal right there. I told him no without thinking because (a) I made the offer exclusive to that room and (b) I definitely couldn’t fulfill another 40.
But I told him we could figure out a deal. We have a call on Monday. I imagine it will end up being about $150,000 deal and have some perks. Because he asked me
“Besides the money, what would make you really excited to do this?”
Great question!!!
I told him if he could get his 40 clients to plug my new book when it’s finished, I’d skip and hop and prance to fulfill on this deal. He said he could make it happen. His audience has a collective reach of over one million emails. So damn.
This is why success is so hard at the start.
No one knows you. You don’t have deliverables you can pull out and tweak, rebuild and repackage. You don’t have a reputation.
And most important - you don’t have momentum.
My hope is reading this will motivate you because nothing succeeds like success. Once you get a win - any win - you leverage it. That’s easy. It’s getting that first win that’s hard. So start small if you can. Use the principles I teach here and right size them to where you’re at. Then get that win, and think of all the strategic byproducts of it.
What does that win now allow you to do that before you couldn’t?
As for momentum - it’s the easiest way to crush procrastination.
When the prize is large and within reach, hard becomes easy. I went hard for the whole week before the launch, putting in some very long hours… but that’s because the stakes were high. And it was exciting. I wasn’t sure if I could pull it off.
Then I did.
-Jason
P.S. I’m starting Facebook again. It was abuzz from attendees. Like this:
