Show Notes:
If you sell high ticket offers above the $2k price point, then booking qualified applicants is a must.
Unfortunately, booking quality calls is a huge struggle for most. Most calls are non-ideal clients who are not pre-framed for the sale, not your ideal avatar, broke or don’t understand the importance of investing. This is difficult whether you are the one selling on the phone personally or you have a sales team.
However, if you had the option to book 30 calls a week and have 3/4 of them no show, be broke, or just not qualified or instead have 10 calls booked per week that were all qualified applicants, people ready to buy from you and pull out their credit cards – which would you choose?
A huge chunk of our clients sell high ticket offers and our #1 goal as an agency is to bring them in high quality, ready to buy prospects. We do this a number of ways and in today’s episode I want to break down very specific steps to take in your process that will start changing who is filling up your calendar.
Put your earbuds in and get ready to take notes!
Share-worthy Quotes:
“You’re going to have a higher conversion rate and an easier phone call when you can warm up prospects right.”
“Warming up your audience beforehand and having this tiered approach works well as long as your audience building and nurture content are actually being watched by your audience because you need to have that retargeting pool of people.”
“Pre-frame applicants for the upcoming call and make it clear on the next steps.”
“We are going to make sure that you have fewer cancellations and no-shows, and have people that are actually qualified to be on the call with you because that’s what we want.”
“The goal is to provide relevant content that is structured strategically to convert your prospects into qualified applicants”
Get the Transcript here:
Episode 15 – How To Book Quality Application Calls
Hey, everybody! Welcome back to the Ad Agency Secrets Podcast. I feel like January is just flying by. When I was sick last week with COVID, I just remember sitting on the couch and it being 11 o’clock and I felt like I had been on the couch for 14 hours. I was like, OMG this is going so slow. Why is time moving so slowly? I don’t get it. But then, as you guys are all probably in the same boat, once you’re at your desk and you’re working, time just flies by. Like I’ll get up and I’ll go, I’m going to go get, I’m going to go pee. I’m going to be right now and I’m like: what? It’s already 11 o’clock. I haven’t gotten up from my desk yet. What is going on? It just flew by.
I feel like this month, and year so far are flying by and I’m not stopping to breathe. Smell the roses, and although I really couldn’t smell anything last week because I was such a head cold. But anyways, I’m excited though for January, it’s coming to an end here soon and we’re doing so many big things in the agency right now in hiring and putting out some really cool content, and our clients are rocking it, so it’s a good month so far.
Today guys, we’re going to talk about application funnels and how to book a quality application call. Applications are really used for, if you’re doing one-on-one coaching, if you have a high ticket offer, whether that is digital or service-based. So what constitutes a high ticket offer?
It would be really any price point at around that $2,000 mark or more. So we have a lot of clients internally that sell $5,000 programs, $20,000 programs and these people that are going to purchase something that’s at that $2,000 or more price point are going to need a little bit more love and personal communication, 99% of the time before purchasing anything that high. So I want to walk you through so you can visually see what an application funnel looks like before we kind of get into the tips here.
An application funnel starts off by capturing a lead somehow, so capturing a lead, be an opt-in, whether that is somebody opted in for a challenge or a webinar, or a free download or a video series. From there, they’re going to watch the webinar or attend the challenge or get the freebie or whatever it might be. So once they opt in and they get that second page, from there, they’re going to an application page, so whether I watched a webinar and after the webinar, they gave me a link and I click on it and I go to an application page.
Or I attend the challenge and at the end of the challenge, they gave me a link to go apply and I’m going to that application page. Or I opted into a free PDF and once I went to that Thank You page there was a VSL, a video sales letter on the page that then had a button for me to click and go to the application page.
So the next step is going to that application page, and I’m a huge proponent of having your prospects fill out the application first before they’re able to book their call. So normally it’s going to be one or the other, is going to be first, either they apply, which means they fill out an application and then they will book their call, or they can book their call and then they can apply.
The thing is though, if they book the call first before having to fill out that application, you are going to have a huge chunk of people not completing the application which is going to be a disaster because you want to make sure that you know who you’re getting on the phone with before you get on the phone with them.
So next, they’re actually going to write and complete that application and after they complete the application, they’re going to book their call. Now after they booked their call, they will land on a confirmation page. I believe on the confirmation page., it should be doing two things. One, it should have a video of the person that they’re booking the call with. For instance, if people book a call with me, there’s a video on my confirmation page of me just talking. So if you have a sales team that’s going to be taking the calls, that’s fine. You can still, you yourself do the video and just say me or one of my success coaches, or whatever you want to call them, are going to be calling you here soon.
The second thing is that the Thank You page should pre-frame the call. Pre-frame them for the upcoming call and then also make it clear on next steps. The more you can make them, and I say, pre-frame like: Hey guys, this call is really going to do XYZ. The goal is to help you get to this next level. So by seeing if you are a good fit in this program or whatever it might be, and then giving them clear steps like you should get an email, a text reminder, and just so they know and letting them know: Hey, put it on your calendar. Don’t forget to show up to this call.
So that confirmation page really is really important, and a lot of people I think don’t put any effort on that and they just have this really simple: Thanks for booking your call, and that’s it, where I think it’s a huge part to getting them ready for your call. So now, depending on how the VSL or webinar, or challenge or video series or whatever it does, how well it does its job, that is going to determine your conversion from just prospects or lead to a booked call. So in each of these video content pieces, video content pieces being the VSL or the webinar or challenge, usually a lot of challenges have videos, maybe it doesn’t, the goal is to provide relevant content that is structured strategically to convert your listeners into applicants.
The struggle that most of us have, and this is probably why you’re listening to this episode right now, is that either why you’re not booking any, which got it’s a whole nother topic, but we are actually going to go into ad strategy a little bit for this, but if you are booking calls, you’re either getting a ton of cancellations, a ton of no-shows or a ton of unqualified applicants. And we all know who I’m talking about when I say on qualified applicants, it’s the ones that pretty much are always going to say I’m broke and really are just trying to get as much information from you as possible. I always say the quote unquote, the “I’m broken people”.
So it may not even be that, it may just be they’re unqualified because they just don’t match your ideal avatar that you’re looking for. And so we are going to come back right now and make sure that you have less cancellations, have less no shows and people are actually qualified to be on the call with you because that’s what we want. We would prefer less calls, like all of our clients and myself, I don’t want to be on a phone all week long with only 20% of the people that book the call being qualified. That is such a waste of my time and we don’t have that time to waste, I don’t have the time to waste, so I’d rather have way less calls, but they’re way more qualified, so less no shows, less cancellations.
So let’s dive into some tips for increasing qualified applicants. One, we’re going to just talk lightly about ad strategies, so warming prospects up before sending them to your sales vehicle is imperative here. This is a bigger ticket item. It doesn’t mean that you can’t send cold traffic to a webinar or cold traffic to a video series and convert them to a high ticket. That absolutely can happen, we do that all the time, but you’re going to have a higher conversion rate and an easier phone call at the end when you can warm them up prior to going into that sales vehicle. So the warmer they are, the more qualified they will be, the more likely they will show up on your call, and the more likely they will say yes to that big price point that you see on the call.
So the way we do this internally is through our GPS method. We had the audience building, where we put content out to a cold audience and we attract them. We then retarget those video views, usually about 25% video views to the nurture phase, which is just more content. We then retarget those people who are 25% of any of those videos in there and then put them to the sales vehicle, the webinar video series challenge, whatever it might be. So at this point they’ve had minimally three touch points with you, hopefully more because there are opportunities for a lot more touch points in there, but at the bare minimum, they’ve had three.
Those are the sales vehicles that are going to turn your prospects into applicants. This is a really common strategy guys, warming up your audience beforehand and having sort of this tiered approach, it works well as long as your audience building and nurture content are actually being watched by your audience, because you need to have that retargeting pool of people. So if you’re putting out content that isn’t very good or it’s not strategically done, which we’ve gone over how to do that in another video or another episode, then you’re not going to have very many video views to retarget.
So your audience building, nurture content have to be being watched, which means it has to be good, and then your sales vehicle itself needs to sell well. It needs to sell people into getting on that call with you and that’s how this whole strategy will work.
There is another strategy that’s really similar to this, it’s just really slightly different, which means we have audience building again, cold audience, we then put them to nurture or nurturing them with more content and then we put them straight to an application video that’s right inside of your ad. So it’s sort of like a video sales letter, but instead of the video sales letter being on a page, like it usually is, it’ll be right in the ad. So they never leave Facebook except to get to the application page, which is kind of cool because it’s less work involved with us. You don’t actually have to build this VSL page or do a whole webinar slide deck or something, if you don’t want to, it’s a little bit easier. We’ve even done ones where you kind of have a VSL or I’m sorry, like what we call a five minute webinar which is kind of a click funnel type thing where it’s audience building to nurture, to a five minute webinar, just a video right in the ad and boom, it sells them into applying and that has worked really, really well.
Definitely the ad strategy and warming them up is a big piece of getting qualified people because if you have the right content in place, then you’re attracting the right people. And we’re actually going to talk about messaging next, because I would just talk to how important content is, but messaging is probably the most important. And a lot of times, people think targeting is the most important piece here. Everybody wants to target the top 5% of income in a zip code or whatever it is and Facebook, and that has actually done the opposite effect with our clients. When we do that, it’s a smaller subset of people, it’s not really all that accurate all the time and it doesn’t really include, it’s not as inclusive as you think it is with the right people.
So you don’t have to narrow down by income when you’re doing high ticket, what you need to do is make sure that your messaging is speaking clearly to that audience. So if you were reading your copy and your ad, even your copy on whatever page you’re sending them to, who is it speaking to? Is it speaking to someone who’s never invested before, is it at the very beginning of their road, and that’s fine. You might be going after a newbie, someone who’s new to coaching and you want to sell them into a $5,000 coaching program. Well, obviously it might be a little bit harder of a sell because they are new and they probably haven’t invested yet, but there’s still a difference than when you speak to anybody. Are you speaking to the victim: oh man, you’ve just tried everything. You’re just so stuck and you just want to hand, and you want help and I can help you, and come join me and I can help you. You’re probably going to attract people who just aren’t very, I’m assertive, I’m a go getter, I’m ready to make this happen. Like I’m here, I’m here to win. This is my year. I’m not playing around. That’s the kind of person you want to speak to, even if they are a newbie. So it’s just really speaking and using the language, and being very careful on certain words that you use to make sure you’re attracting the right person and you’re not attracting the victims, you’re attracting the people that are really the go getters.
And if you are trying to attract people who have invested before, because I do think that’s a big piece of it when you’re trying to go high ticket if they’ve at least invested something before, then you need to make sure you’re speaking that language in the ad copy. The copy needs to speak to where that person is at, what they’ve done, the struggles they’re having, which are gonna be different from someone who hasn’t struggled before. And again, that’s a different person then, so that the messaging honestly is a huge piece of this. And if you can make sure you’re speaking to your ideal avatar and it repels, because maybe you’re like: well this does speak to my ideal avatar, but it could also speak to my non-ideal avatar. Then you need to put a copy in there that repels your non-ideal avatar, that’s crucial.
So messaging is the next one, and to me, that’s a huge piece of just getting the right people even into your funnel, the right people watching your videos. Next will be your call to action. So your call to action sets the precedence for what your prospect is expecting. If you say: Hey, let’s hop on a VIP call where you’re going to learn my three-step strategy to making seven figures, then you’re going to be attracting a lot of freebie seekers, like those who are just so excited to get on a phone call with you and chat and ask you all the questions, and you know exactly who I’m talking about. Those who will run your calendar booked solid and waste your time without ever buying a single thing.
On the flip side, if your CTA were something like: do you want to learn how our students are tripling the revenue year after year? Apply today for a quick call to see if my six X mentorship program is right for you. Now they are expecting this call to be about a program, not a call giving away free information. They know the call is to see if they are a good fit for the program. It’s a huge difference and I’m seeing way too many times people are just saying, let’s get on a call and let me give you lots of free information. I’ll give you one audit on where you’re at and you’re just going to get a lot of people who are just wanting a lot of information.
And then number one thing they’re going to say at the very end of that call: I’m broke, in so many words and everyone’s always like, man I’m just attracting broke people, and really you’re not. It’s not that they’re broke, you’re just attracting the wrong people. You’re attracting people that aren’t ready to invest and who were freebie seekers at the time.
All right, so the CTA is really important. Your application is the next piece. So making sure that you have qualifying questions on your application is going to ensure that you get people on the call who are a perfect fit for you. When you have an application, which is going to be a series of questions that they’re going to answer, you want to put at least two qualifying questions in there. And meaning, if they put an answer to the question, there’s either a right or wrong answer for you specifically to know this is an ideal person for you. So for instance, I ask in my application: Does your current offer, that the one that you are looking to run ads to, have you currently sold this? Is it profitable? Is this a converting offer? They’re either going to tell me yes or no. If they tell me no, they’re not ideal for me. They’re not ideal for my agency. They’re ideal for coaching, but not for my agency. Now in that same question, I also say it’s a minimum initial package of ours is 3,500 a month. That’s the first tier. Are you able to invest this? And they need to say yes, if they say no, I’m not going to get on a phone call, it’s that easy. And a lot of times they won’t even finish filling out the application. So what does that do? It actually weeds out applicants before they ever submit it.
I know this for a fact, because I immediately saw a dip in my applicants, but it also saw the percentage of them being qualified was higher. I have also had it before, so filling out the application, it’s actually my last or second last question where I talk about the price point. And then they’re like: Man, I wish you would’ve told me this earlier before I answered all these questions, and then they get upset and then they still submit it. Anyways, people are funny. But obviously I didn’t take the phone call, so it was a great way to be like: Hey guys, thanks for the quick laugh, see ya, I’m not going to get on the call. But the questions on the application are really important, having at least two qualified ones on there, don’t have a million questions that just got off a phone call with a potential client that I found out they had like a hundred literally, not even joking, maybe they had a hundred, now they have 45.
They had a hundred questions, now they have 45, you’re in there like: We don’t understand why we’re not getting booked calls. That would be why nobody wants to fill that out. So anywhere from five to eight questions, I definitely have a couple of clients who have a few more than that, and they do well. But I would say anywhere from five to eight questions, major questions, outside of your name and an email, and making sure you have at least two qualifying ones in there, to make sure that you repel the ones that aren’t going to be on the call, and also you can say yes or no to the rest of them.
Alright, so the last piece, which isn’t really my piece but it’s a big piece, is your video. Whether it’s a webinar or a challenge, whether it’s a VSL, whatever it is, having the correct flow, because you want to get qualified people on the call, and you just need to make sure that in your video, in your script, whatever you’re talking head, whenever you’re pitching to them this call, it’s just having a really great flow to it. Obviously at the end of the day, you have to sell them into applying and we’re talking in this episode about qualifying them and making sure you get more qualified applicants on the call.
I’ll go into more of the flow of how a VSL should in a different episode. But I just want to make sure that you guys understand that your webinar has to convert, your video series has to convert. The content you’re giving out has to convert in order for the rest of this process to work. There’s like a whole flow that Jim Edwards gives, he gives a whole structure on VSLs and really can use that in anything, in my opinion, in webinars and everything. Which goes through, there’s multiple steps, I’ll just read them off here. It’s: explain the problem, agitate the problem, introduce the solution, build credibility, show proof, explain exactly what they get, give a reason for them to act now, and then close the sale with a final call to action, which we already talked about: call to action.
There’s definitely some steps that you should be following because at the end of the day, you’re only going to get people to the application page, even fill it out as long as your flow and what you say, your webinar, et cetera, convert.
So that’s it guys, just to quickly recap, we had the different types of application funnels, a light ad strategy that’s going to work for this, ad messaging being a huge part of this, your call to action being very important, your application and then of course, just ensuring that your webinar, or whatever your sales vehicle, is actually converts itself.
So that brings us to the end of the episode on how to book qualified application calls and just follow the steps I outlined that will gravely increase the quality of your calls, which will then just bring you in more revenue, hopefully in the coming months. And if you want more support with your Facebook or your Instagram advertising needs with one of the leading digital marketing agencies, then you can book your call with us at the JW Agency today. Just go to gpsmyads.com, that’s gpsmyads.com. And I will be the one to personally actually speak with you, so I will hopefully see you in the next episode, guys. Bye.
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