How To Effectively Leverage Text Messaging When Speaking to Groups

Transcription of Interview

Ryan: Okay. So, if you don't mind, can we start from that point where you're now running trusted advisors, you're teaching, you've got your speakers, and you started out as the speaker, so you're speaker, how are you guys running that live event in terms of sales and lead capture? I think, given that context, we'll set up the rest of the discussion.

Chad: When I work with attorneys that speak, when I work with marketers that speak, when I worked with any professional that is speaking, still to this day, anywhere from 30 to 50% of their prospects and clients are coming from some sort of speaking engagement. When you speak, you establish yourself as an authority in that area. At Infusionsoft, we spent a lot of money getting on these stages because we knew that if we were going to be on the stage, we'd be perceived as the authority figure, Infusionsoft, when it comes to CRM, automated software, and so forth. We knew we had to have not only speaking assignments, but we had to have the best speakers up there presenting.

The challenge came to this, Ryan. We get up on these stages and we had introductions from, "Hey, we love Chad. He's an awesome part of Ryan Chapman or Ryan Deiss' community" or however they introduce, sometimes it was great. We even had people introduced someone on our speaker team as, "Hey, please welcome to the stage, infusion guy." Then we had 60 minutes to convince people that they wanted to buy the software. At the time, it was a $2,000 upfront, $300 a month commitment. It was a significant commitment.

We would go through teaching people the things that many of you already know, that is it takes multiple interactions for people to want to buy. There are some people that are ready immediately, that are ready to buy, but oftentimes it takes multiple interactions. We would teach that from stage, and at the end of the 60 minutes we'd say, "Okay, buy right now." The way that it was set up, Ryan, in the Infusionsoft world is if that person did not buy and they went home and on Monday called the office and said, "Hey, I heard Chad speak over the weekend. I thought about it on Sunday. I talked to my wife. We're ready to buy," I wouldn't get the sale.

Ryan: So there's a lot of pressure on you guys, the speakers, to close in the room right there, whether it was a good idea for them or not.

Chad: Absolutely

Ryan: You guys had to get your credit for sales. Otherwise, you wouldn't earn what you needed to earn.

Chad: The challenge was, Ryan, we were finding that the people that called in later were actually better customers. They stayed longer. They thought, it was a real thoughtful decision for them. They went and did a little bit of research and they came and they said, "Okay. I'm ready to buy."

Ryan: Which is commonly the case.

Chad: Yeah, but what happened was we weren't getting any credit for that in the trusted advisor channel sales, and we weren't following up with them to continue the nurturing process. We thought to ourselves, okay, we need to do something about this. We're going to go ahead and cut out half slips of paper and tell everybody, hey, fill out this piece of paper and we're going to give you this ebook. And the e-book was How to Fix Follow-Up Failure. We gave them to everybody and we would get around 30% of the room to say, "Okay, I'll fill this out."

Ryan: Which really isn't bad for the worst way you can do it.

Chad: Yeah, it wasn't terrible, but then as a team we thought, we've got to do something differently. We have to do something differently. And this is where we went a little bit rogue. We, the trusted advisor department or the channel sales department, got our own Infusionsoft app, went and got Fix Your Funnel, and start doing lead capture from the stage.

Ryan: I love this. This is something that I think is a credit to your guys and your team, the willingness you guys had to go outside of protocol to make sure you got stuff done. You guys knew the power of Infusionsoft and the power of coupling that with Fix Your Funnel and said, "Hey, we've got have that for us in order for us to do the best job we can in people recognize and get the power of infusionsoft. You guys went off of, what was it, Netsuite, maybe at the time?

Chad: No, it was actually Sales Force.

Ryan: Was it already? Okay, so you're like, "Yeah, we can't even with that. We're going to go ahead and go infusionsoft and Fix Your Funnel and then we'll at some point transfer that stuff over to the big CRM."

Chad: That's correct. That's exactly what we did. It changed everything. For one, trusted advisor sales lead capture went from capturing 30% of the room to capturing over 90% of the room.

Ryan: That's a pretty big deal.

Chad: Yeah. It was just an incredible increase. The one thing that is lacking, now more than ever in the world, is leadership. When you have a lead capture like Fix Your Funnel, when we're doing that from stage, we are leading people in helping them take easy steps to be successful. I know you're a big fan of Don Miller and Story Brand, and Don Miller says, "The brain is wired to do two things: survive and burn as few calories as possible."

So, when we would be speaking from stage, someone would say, "Oh, wait a second. I really want How to Fix Your Follow-Up Failure. How do I do that?" Then when you hand them a paper, that's one of those things that you think is simple, but it's like, "I got to consume too many calories to do that." When I say, "text this word to this number," it's very simple and you're leading the way.

People are like, "These guys know what they're doing, they're leaders in the community, they're leaders in this automation, I'm going to opt in." We went from 30 to over 90% of people saying, "Okay, let's do this."

Ryan: I think a question that comes up for a lot of people is, "Okay, you guys are supposed to be selling though. How did that impact in the moment sales? Did sales go down, stay the same, go up? What happened once you guys started collecting leads that way? That's always a concern. You have to look at the whole picture, not just the front end. That's like people bragging about the size of their list, it really doesn't matter. It's how much money do you guys actually bring home at the end of the day? How did that impact sales when you guys suddenly were getting 90% of the room text in?

Chad: That's a great question. A lot of people think, "Oh, wait, if I use Fix Your Funnel, then people will think they've already taken an action step." No. you get them beginning to take action steps, which gets them to take the bigger action set, which actually is purchasing the product. So, in room sales actually increased as well.

Ryan: Was part of that because of the demonstration that you guys are actually able to engage them in? From what I understand, you guys would have them text in, then you say,"Check your email inbox, by the way, because there's something in there and I'm still up here talking to you." There was something to that effect. Was there not that kind of demonstration going on?

Chad: There was. The only hang up to it was when they would come to the back of the room and we had to explain to them that they had to also purchase Fix Your Funnel to get that experience.

Ryan: Right.

Chad: And that was everyone's favorite part. I'm like, "Why did you buy Infusionsoft?" They're like, "Because you did that incredible text lead capture! I think I can do that on my webinars or I think I can do it here," and we're like, "Well, about that. You also need Fix Your Funnel to make that happen."

Ryan: So in the room sales actually went up, and it could be, in part, because that engagement that's happening in the texting part that made them more engaged with you guys as an audience. You're speaking expert, what do you feel like is the factor there? I think it's important for people that are listening to understand, how does this thing work? What happened in that so that they can make sure they're doing the right parts.

Chad: Ryan, what we were doing is we were getting people to make micro commitments throughout the presentation. They were already saying, "Okay, listen, Chad, I'm going to, as Ryan Deiss would say, I'm gonna start dating you during this relationship. Here's my phone number." They already gave us their phone number, so it was like, okay, we're building a relationship here.

Ryan: Is that sort of a measure for you guys of, how well are we connecting with the audience? How many people pull up their phone? It's like a visual?This isn't apply maybe in the video context or the webinar context, but in the live speaking context, it was a visual sign to you that yes, I enrolled the audience in some way where I've earned enough trust that they're willing to actually take physical action, not just cross their arms and shake their head.

Chad: Yes, and also, Ryan, people will rise to whatever level of expectation you establish for them. When I teach entrepreneurs and business leaders how to present, I'll tell them, "Listen, if you ask them to text the number to this and a bunch of people just sit there and do nothing, you stop and you go, 'Okay. Wait a second.' You get them to enroll, you get them to take out their phone, and you get them to engage with you."

A lot of people think that when it comes to speaking, they want to be an entertaining speaker. When I teach entrepreneurs and business leaders, I always tell them, "You never want to be entertaining. You want to be engaging." No one left a Jerry Seinfeld presentation and went, "Man, I got to be better at this."

You don't want to be entertaining, you want to be engaging.

Getting them to text in their number gets them to lean forward and heightens their level of engagement. They're like, "Okay. I just texted Chad here. We already started this communication." They know it's automated, but psychologically it creates a conversation to build trust within the relationship. It's amazing to feel the energy of the room when they're going, "Wow, this is really, no way! This is really cool!" There's an exchange of value now. This is a literal exchange of value.

Ryan: Right.

Chad: You just gave me your phone number. I'm giving you an email, I'm giving you a one page, or whatever it is you're giving, I'm getting your video training. That literal exchange with value is happening right in the middle of your presentation. That's one of the main reasons why I believe when we came to the end of the presentation, sales increased in the back of the room.

Ryan: That's interesting. I know a lot of people get concerned about breaking up the momentum of their presentation. Another common mistake people are making is they're sticking this on the last slide if they're not selling, that text message call to action, which is a huge mistake. Then they're like, "It didn't work." That's because it was at the very end.

Is there a place in the presentation where you like to put that? Some people feel like, if I stopped my spiel and then I get people to pull out their phones, I'm going to lose the audience. You just laid out almost the opposite argument. How would you respond to that question of, "I'm going to break up my momentum if I stop my presentation to ask them to actually engage with me by texting in."

Chad: Right. Well, the first thing I would say is the thought process of saying, "I'm going to break up my momentum," is troubling to me because it's all about them and their experience. The best speakers have the people leaving talking about the content you shared, not about you.

Ryan: You're saying you have to flip on its head that perspective of, "This is about me and my flow." You and your flow really don't matter at the end of the day. It's the flow of the audience. How the audience walks away from that experience is going to determine actually your financial outcome. They might clap at the end, wow, that was quite a performance, but they'll never remember you because they didn't engage.

Chad: One, they won't ever remember you. Two, they'll never do anything with what you've asked them to do.

Ryan: Which is the big deal.

Chad: Anyone who gives a presentation, they need people to leave doing something. People will say, "No, it's a non-pushy thing," or" I'm just doing an educational piece." Well, if you've given content and haven't given direction what to do with the content, you just wasted everybody's time. You've got to give them keys to help them be more successful. As I look at when we placed the text, we would do it in the middle of the presentation.

Ryan: Just right in the middle. Why did you guys choose then?

Chad: We chose the middle because at the beginning, we didn't have the trust yet for people to give us their text message and their email. They weren't ready for that at the beginning. The middle was a perfect time because it also allowed them to make a micro-commitment and then we finished with the actual purchase of the product. We had to do it in the middle. If we did towards the end, we would be asking them to do too many things. We'd be asking them to do this and this.

Instead we're saying, "Hey, you may want to consider exercising." Then at the end of it we said, "Okay, we need you to diet and exercise." If we would have waited to the end and said, "Okay, you need to change your diet and exercise," we would have lost a lot of people. Because we have them committed midway through, "Okay, I'm gonna do that. You know what? I'm also going to do that."

Ryan: That has been my experience too. If you do it early enough on, you're actually engaging them with you and connecting them with you. Now you've said, "No, I expect you to do this." This shows that leadership component brought up. You demonstrate, "I'm a leader. I'm actually going to lead you somewhere. I expect you to take action." A lot of people, thrive for that.

Dan Kennedy puts it a way that's almost a little demeaning, he says, "People are walking around out there with an umbilical cord looking for a place to plug in." The reality is that we do look for people that are competent in what they do and can give us guidance so we can get to the promised land that we're looking for.

If you've demonstrated during the first half of your speech or talk, whether it's webinar video or a live presentation, that you actually have expertise in what you're talking about, the likelihood that when you enroll them to take a physical action, you're going to have more success in getting them to take the next thing that you need them to take in order for them to get to the destination they're going to. We're going to talk, in terms of sales and revenue, but those are representations of trust and hopefully moving people in the right direction in their lives and taking them to a place of greater value in their lives over all. That's the whole concept here.

We're going to use those terms, revenue and sales, to do that. You did get increase in sales. You did get more leads. You now are able to connect who's buying with who you spoke to even if that purchase doesn't happen at the even. What happened to sales overall in the trusted advisor program as a result of the changes you guys started to make?

Chad: Oh, we increased by 100%. It was significant because of what happened. Let me just bring up one thing. When you're asking for their number, I want everyone to remember this important principle, people match your energy in three minutes or less. Whatever energy you're bringing, they're going to match it in three minutes or less.

If you ever did in a webinar or even in a video or a live presentation, when you ask them to text in, if you're excited about them texting in and if it feels like the natural right thing for them to do, then they will be excited and feel like, "Oh, it's the natural right thing for me to do." The problem with too many speakers, when I would coach them at Infusionsoft and the private clients I have now, I would say, "Listen, when you get to the texting part, 90% of the speakers change their energy."

Ryan: Yeah, because they feel like they're doing something.

Chad: Right. The audience or the group you're speaking to is going, "Wait, I'm nervous. Why am I nervous?" It's because they're matching your nervous energy. You're up there and you're like, "Okay, I've got this great content. Okay. Now I want you to, um, take out your phones real quick. Unless, unless, you don't want to, then that's fine too." You may not say that, but that's the message, that's the energy you're sending.

When you go, "Take out your phones real quick. I want you to get this one-pager. It's really pretty... Wait. There's a few of you that don't have your phones out. Take your phones! This is an awesome one-pager. You're gonna want this. This is going to be something that's going to really change the way you're doing it." Then people are like, "Oh, okay." It's very natural and they feel your natural, comfortable feeling and energy.

Ryan: I think that's why you have to, as a presenter, get to a place inside your own heart that you know that what you're doing is good for the people you're serving. You have to be crystal clear on that. That's where I see people struggle that do present, whether it's a video, a webinar, a live presentation, where they struggle is, there's part of them that hasn't reconciled what they do to the value they actually bring to people. There's a part of them that's unclear about,"Am I really bringing value of people?"

I get that at the beginning of any new venture. You may not be 100% clear. You may be trying to convince yourself that, yeah, this is going to be good for people. But you've got to get to that place where you know, "What I'm doing is going to make a huge positive impact."

I know at Fix Your Funnel that we've changed people's lives. We changed their businesses significantly if they'll listen to us, if they'll use the tools the way that we recommend, I know they're going to get great results just like you guys did at Infusionsoft. I don't have any qualms about asking people to do stuff. I still try and make it so that there's no risk on their part to get started with us, like with our dollar trial, but that's not because I'm nervous about our delivery? I know that we'll deliver and it will be great for them.

That's why I throw all this time and effort into our customer support. I want people to know, we're going to take care of you. We're gonna be there for you. If you've got if you run into any questions, any trouble, we're going to take care of you. Because I have that level of confidence, I can always speak confidently about Fix Your Funnel because I reconciled what is the good that I bring to the market.

As a speaker, especially, you have to have that so that, as you speak you're going to be confident. You're going to be able to tell people and when it comes to asking for them to do the text in, you're not going to have any hesitation whatsoever.

I felt like Don was a great example of that when he was at the last ICON and he was speaking in his breakout room. You could tell he didn't have any hesitation about, "Well, I wonder if this is going to be valuable for people? Is this an even exchange of their phone number for my five things every website must have?" He knew it. He knew it was going to make a difference. You have to be in that place because that's that will sabotage if you're timid or not matching the energy.

Chad: We'll get to this, but there are five things I want to talk specifically about that I believe shifted and changed when we started using Fix Your Funnel.

Ryan: Let's go into those. Go into those five things and how they help.

Chad: They changed everything. I think the first one, and we've been talking a little bit about this, is the energy in the room shifted. The energy of the room changed. It changed for two reasons. One, the audience increase their energy because they were engaging in the experience. They were not entertaining. The best speaker we ever had at Infusionsoft, I won't mention his name, but he's by far the best speaker when we ever had, was consistently our worst sales person. They were worried, Ryan, about the flow of the presentation rather than getting people to engage. They were worried more about entertaining than they were engaging.

By the way, Ryan, and I know you'll send my contact information, if someone wants to email me and reach out, say, "Hey, Chad, here's my presentation. When would you see the natural fit for my text opt in?" I'll help coach them through that.

But the reality is, this individual was worried about being an entertaining speaker instead of an engaging speaker, so no one left ever purchasing Infusionsoft. No one left ever doing anything and people would always tell him as they were walking out the door, "You're the best speaker I've ever seen."

Ryan: Can I pause real quick? There's two questions that came through on this topic and they're like, okay. I'm doing a webinar where I'm doing a presentation. Would you put that in the middle of the webinar, and will that disrupt it? But I think what you're saying is exactly the same thing, whether it's live or webinar, which is, you're there to engage the audience, not to give a presentation.

If you're going to move people, then yes. What I've found to be super effective is to introduced it at that midway point. For example, we probably should lead by example here. On the screen, you guys see the phone number 480-787-0991, and you text the number one to it, what it's going to give you is this little perfect presentation one-pager that Chad put together. You can get that, go through it, but it'll basically give these main points that we're going to go through.

I asked Chad, because we were chatting about this training, I said, "Chad, is there any kind of one-pager you could give folks so that, as they're going to do their next video, they can have those prompts about what you're going to talk about as we chat?" And he said, "Absolutely," and put that together.

Of course I made him use a text message call to action so you guys can see it in action. I also had him put on this QR code, we did that this morning.

The reason I did the QR code, if you have an iPhone you're watching this on your desktop, pull up your iPhone, open up the camera, and point it at the QR code. You'll see a little button across the top of your your camera app in that little preview picture and there will be a little button there. Press that button, it will ask you then to open the messages app, tap that, and the phone number and the keyword are pre-filled out, and you just have to hit the send button. We'll show this again later.

If we were doing slides though, what I would do, and this is what I always do, is put it either across the top or the bottom. If I'm doing a webinar, I'll just do it across the bottom. If I'm doing a live presentation, I do it across the top. I keep that call to action, in this case text one to 480-787-9901, across the top if it's a live presentation, just because I don't want heads to get in the way and cut off the bottom.

If I'm doing a webinar, I do it across the bottom because I may want the focus to be on the majority of the slide. You just put a little banner across the bottom with that call to action. Explain it at the point where you know you've enrolled enough trust and you've made enough of point. Then say, "If you want this, go ahead and text there," and then you go on. That's sort of like what you call trial close.

Chad: I want to add this. When you're doing it, make sure you're not rushing through it.Make sure that you're going, "I want you to text in. Okay, I'll give you a second to do this. Text in the word one to 480-787-9901.

Ryan: That's a common mistake that we see. I think it goes back to that, how do you feel inside about that? Do you feel like you're pulling a fast one on people? If that's what you feel like, you're going to rush through it. If you understand, my only point in being here, my only point in speaking, is to get this opportunity for you to connect with my stuff.

Chad: Also, Ryan, with the one-pager, I'll give them a preview of one of the modules in my course that talks about questions specifically, stories and questions, and how we rush too quickly through the story or the question. We'll ask a question or we'll ask somebody do something, whether it's a real question or it's just asking them to text in this number, and then when we go through it quickly, it gives the impression to the audience or the people we’re speaking to, "They don't really expect me to do it."

Ryan: I know I've been guilty of that, too, when I wasn't properly prepared mentally for extending the invitation. It is something that's going to happen. Just make sure that you're paying attention to that. If you're going to go speak to a big group, that's your only point. Your only point is to capture the leads so that you have an opportunity now and in the future to communicate and continue that conversation and then to invite them take action now. You have no other point. If you go up there and entertain, I guarantee there's something else more entertaining.

That's one of the rules of the world. Wherever there's something that's good, there is always something better. There's something worse, but there's always something better. If you say, "Oh man, I'm so entertaining. I'm just going to wow them with my entertainment," guess what? There's something more entertaining. There always is. Don't let yourself think that that's enough. You've got to connect and get that information. Okay, I derailed, go ahead and go back.

Chad: I don't want you to entertain. I don't want you to wow them with your entertaining, I want you to wow them with your content. I want you to get them excited about the content, not about you. Ryan doesn't care if people are talking about Ryan Chapman. He cares about people talking about how Fix Your Funnel is changing their business.

Ryan: Yeah.

Chad: That's what's exciting to Ryan. If Ryan's at an event and someone gets up and goes, "I just got to talk about Fix Your Funnel. This is crazy how purchasing this one product has changed everything we do. It's amazing, we're doing this, this. and this. And the guys name. I think it's uh, Ryan Chavis. He's amazing. I don't know." Ryan doesn't care. He's like, "I don't really care, whatever."

Ryan: To be honest, I get the chills about the transformation that they have in their business and I feel humbled that we get to be a part of that. For me, that's the way it is. And that's I think how you need to be about whatever content you're bringing. Money is attracted to that scenario. Money is not attracted to desperation or to need. The need for money doesn't attract money. What attracts money is competence and confidence and that focus on actually bringing a solution to another person. That's a big part of preparing to make that presentation. I interrupted though. I do want to get back to you. So you've covered one or two now so far...

Chad: Energy. I really want you to realize that the energy of the room changes with the audience as they engage in texting. Their commitment has also increased because they've just shown consistency and commitment. They just texted in and they're going, "Okay, I just gave Chad my number, I just gave Ryan my number, I should lean forward and at least listen to what he's saying." But also, the energy of the speaker changes.

All of a sudden, the pressure for us is gone. We're like, "Okay. I've got 100% of the people's names and numbers in this room. I'm good. Now I can relax and feel more comfortable," which brings me to the second point, which is authenticity. When you use that number to capture the leads, the pressure is reduced and you can be a more authentic version of yourself.

The reason why I scream authenticity is so critical is we've never lived in a more fake world than the one we live in today. No one believes Instagram. Fake news is now something that people speak about commonly. We have fake news. We have fake Instagram. We have fake Facebook. Everything is fake. I'm looking for authentic.

In my course, and when I'm working with private clients, I'm always telling them, don't try to be somebody else. Be you and implement the right tools and methodology that enables you to be you. This Fix Your Funnel texting is one of those tools that we're talking about today that allows you to be more authentic version of yourself. Don't be that car salesman. Don't be that person that you're not. Be authentic.

Ryan: Do you feel like it's not only a matter of engagement but taking the pressure off of your speakers allowed them to be more effective and more focused on the audience, and o as a result sales went up? Maybe it's not so much about the mechanism of people texting in alone, but that relieved from the speaker all this pressure and stress that they were carrying going in. That's the part that gives you the butterflies and everything. In part, it's like, "I want to do a good job. I want to deliver the content."

But, for a speaker that's selling, a large part of that is, "Am I going to make the money I need to be able to pay my bills, take care of loved ones, go on the vacation, whatever the thing may be?" That pressure is intense and it manipulates who you are. Once they know that that is in place, and you called it the safety net at one point, it was like instead of doing this high-wire act with no net, it was like installing an net underneath. They knew even if they slipped up, they're gonna have something to catch them so they weren't gonna die.

Chad: That's exactly right. That's what we did call it. We called it a safety net to allow the speaker to know that, "Okay, look, you have 100% of these people. The ones that are ready now, they're going to raise their hand at the end because you've caused them to make a micro commitment. But those who haven't or won't be ready today, don't worry about it. You'll get them next month. You'll get them next year." It allows you to remove that pressure because there is a safety net. You have that safety net.

I was thinking about the safety net specifically as Coronado Bridge. Ryan, I'm sure you've driven over that a few times, Coronado Bridge in San Diego, California. It's a pretty high bridge. As you're driving over it and you glance over, it's kind of frightening. You have these barriers on the side. If you remove the barriers, it would cause you to tense up significantly. But I've never hit those barriers.

Ryan: It's like a stairway without the rails. If you ever been in a new home that doesn't have the handrail and it's got open stairs, for me, I'm 6-7, but I'm scared of heights. If I even get on a step and we're up four feet and there's no handrail, I'm scared to death! I've walked upstairs millions of times and not touched the handrail.

Chad: And that's what we're doing with the safety net. That's what you're doing to allow you to be more authentic. We're just putting up those safety rails so you can drive over the bridge, you can walk up those stairs and feel totally comfortable and as opposed to being like, "Okay, wait a second. If I fall here, what's going to happen?" When you aren't capturing those leads, even via webinar or via video or however you're doing it, it causes you to try and push harder than you should.

Ryan: I think I brought this up with Oli on my last training that we did together, but I feel like this also is that base hit concept. I'm taking base hits instead of just having to hit the home run from the stage or in the webinar. Even if people are like, well, I got people to register for my webinar, so what do I need to do anything else with? If I'm having people text in, I'm capturing their phone number, which I maybe didn't get reliably pre-webinar if I wasn't enforcing it. It's still going to give you more options. It'll help take the pressure off.

Chad: Yeah, Oli was obviously comparing it to cricket.

Ryan: Oh, instead of baseball. I don't even know how Cricket works. Sorry. I can't even follow you on that one.

Chad: Any sport that lasts more than a couple of days. That second piece, that authenticity is huge.

Ryan: Energy, authenticity. What's my third element?

Chad: The third one is the value. When people get up, they're immediately trying to gauge, how much value are you going to bring to this presentation? We do suggest or imply that, not only am I giving you a ton of value during this presentation, I have more value coming to your inbox or coming to your phone. Then people are like,"Oh, wow." The perception is that you have a ton of value to bring to the table. Like, "I don't even have time to cover this now, we're gonna give you more value."

Ryan: I know a lot of our Fix Your Funnel users will give their slides away as their their giveaway. Part of that is they're saying, "Don't worry about taking copious notes, just be present here with me. I'm going to send you my slides and those will remind you of all the stuff that we talked about today. Just text SLIDES to the number you see on the screen and I'll send those out." I know a few people in the comments mentioned that that's what they have done. Is there an authenticity or energy element of the audience that you're looking to address as well? Or is that like four or five in terms of what you're looking at?

Chad: Okay, it is. You're absolutely right. When when people share that, and I do like that, because people start taking pictures of the slides and so forth. It gives the impression to the audience that, "Wow, everyone here is grasping the value of what Ryan is saying or what Chad or whoever is saying, I better listen closely. Yes, I want these slides. Whether I'm going to consume these slides or not, I don't know, but I'm actually am going to text in so I can get these slides."

People are looking for value and they're looking for you to deliver that. When you give them the slides or you give them whatever it is that you have, it gives them that impression that that's what you're about. You're about providing value.

Ryan: My whole philosophy is about creating a relationship. You want to try and create a heart-to-heart connection and that probably falls into authenticity as well. I'm going to be totally me, I want you to be totally you and let's see if we can connect. If we don't connect, that's probably a good sign that we shouldn't do anything else in the future. But if we are connecting, that's a really good sign that we got something in the future to do together. That's what I'm looking for.

When I see people doing the slides thing, I hope that what they understand that they're doing is opening that door for that person to let their guard down, let their tension of, I got to capture this, I'm going to miss it, go down so they can just be present and connect. I feel like if someone can get to that point where they're not worrying about all the other things, but they can actually connect with that speaker and that speaker isn't worrying about, "Am I giving the best presentation possible?", they're worried about connecting with that audience and then leading that audience somewhere.

That connection allows you to actually lead in a very powerful way long-term. That's one of those great benefits that can come when you can find ways to help get into that person's psyche and allow the stress to go down, allow the barrier to go down and get them in that place where they're going to be able to really match your energy a lot quicker too.

Chad: Remember, Simon Sinek says, "You are not looking to do business with everyone who needs what you have, but to do business with those who believe what you believe." You're looking to try and connect with as many people that believe what you believe. When you present value and give them an opportunity to raise their hand, they're connecting with you.

If somebody comes and says, "I don't believe in cell phones and I don't think texting is the way of the future," then, Ryan, you're not interested in connecting with that person. You're looking to connect with those who believe what you believe.

The other thing that giving the slides does, it's, 'Hey, Ryan, I just spent days, even weeks, on these slides and there's a ton of good content and a lot of value here. I'm gonna go ahead and give those to you." People are like, whoa. "Combine that with years of experience that I have to help contribute to these slides, I'm handing you a lot." And people are excited and grateful for that.

Ryan: Do you communicate that call to action in that way then? You try to express, here's what I put into this. Yeah, we're gonna have a good time together. We're going to learn some really great stuff for you. But I want you to know I spent a lot of time putting the right information in here. So, when you get these slides, know that this has got decades of my past experience with my own business, with my clients, whatever the case may be to give it context. Do you go that deep as you're explaining before you ask them to do something?

Chad: If you do, the only thing I would advise is just make sure you don't make it about you. Let me give you an example. X

Ryan: I was wondering about that because that's like, "Hey I did this, me, me, me, me."

Chad: Yeah. You just say, "Hey, man, I know there's a lot of you that are interested in these slides. There's a ton of content in these slides. I get that. There's a ton of content that can help you grow your business, a ton of experience that I've had to help you become the business owner you want to be."

Ryan: It's the, "my experience to your benefit," you're making that connection. I wanted to call that out for everybody that's with us so that they know, that's how you want to be doing that set up. You can do that super wrong, when you start making it all about you. It's a matter of, if you are going to bring up what you put into it, you now connect it to them. Like, "I put this together so that you can get a clear picture of how to XYZ."

Chad: And for those that text in and they get that free module for my course, we talk about that story piece, how you use story to actually make it a part of somebody's presentation.

Ryan: That's super critical too.

Chad: Do not make it all about you. We could just jump back to energy for just a second, energy in the room increases the moment you make your presentation about the audience. The challenge for a lot of speakers is they get to a point where, even after they had energy, they're authentic, they've given great value, the presentation is going really well, and they're like, "Oh yeah, I'm good," as soon as you do that and make it about you, the energy in the room dies.

Whenever I share this with clients, they're always like, "No way. I saw that happening." You can see real life experiences where someone's doing an incredible job presenting, and then all of a sudden just made it about themselves, the energy in the room dies . Everyone's like, "Why did the energy just die?" It's because it's always about them.

The moment you make it about you the energy is gone. You have to really capture them.

The fourth thing I want to touch on quickly, and you've alluded to it, is in each one of these areas, trust is built. The fourth thing is trust. We all know the phrase: people buy from those they know, like, and trust. But think about this for a moment: in a recent study, 55% of people said they will pay a premium to work with someone they trust. When you capture their lead from stage and you nurture them, you are building trust with.

How is trust built when someone says, "If you don't make a decision today, Ryan, then I'm not going to do business with you."?

But if someone says, "Hey, I get it. I'm gonna nurture you, there is a trust there, to where, "Okay, Ryan's confident enough in Fix Your Funnel that if I'm not going to buy it right now, and it's okay, maybe now is not the right time for you. But when it is right, then, you know what? You really need to look us up." People are going, "Wait a second. I trust him."

But, "if someone walks away, you're dead to me. I need you to buy Fix Your Funnel right now." "Uh, no now doesn't work." "You're dead to me." And you move on, there was a trust that dropped. And we were doing that on the speaker team.

Ryan: Well, of course!

Chad: Before we did that, I had a guy come up to me, true story, he comes up to me and he says, "Chad, I want to buy Infusionsoft, but I'm from Australia and I just have to get home and get some things taken care of. Can I give you my contact information? What can you do?" Remember, Ryan, I didn't get credit for this because we hadn't set up the lead capture the way that we had with Fix Your Funnel. And I said, "Yeah, just call the office."

And I went on to the next person. They've got a credit card. They've got a credit card. They've got a credit card. It changed the whole dynamic.

When you do that, you build trust at a higher level. The other thing is when you're doing it, I know a couple people have asked about webinars, when you do it in a webinar, remember the people already know that you have their content information because they register for the webinar. They already know you have their information. So, when you're asking to give additional information by texting in a number, they're going, "Wait a second. They already have my information, and they still want to give more, more, and more, that trust shoots through the roof. They're going, "This is this is more value. This is greater for me. I have greater trust because they already have my email and phone number. I've already opted in for this to be on the webinar, but they're going to yet give more, which also contributes to that trust."

Ryan: We've got the trust. What what's the fifth element? I'm super curious.

Chad: The fifth one is action or sale. What do I mean by that? People that create presentations that don't have people doing something are wasting their time. You have to have them do some sort of action. When we create and when we use that, the Fix Your Funnel opt-in, it got us focused on making people take action.

Ryan: And you still ask people to take action and buy there, but that's not always the action that you're inviting people to take at the end of your presentation?

Chad: To purchase?

Ryan: Yeah.

Chad: Absolutely noy, no, but you got people to do something. You want people to do something. If I ask you and if I ask everyone on this training, Ryan, who are the most inspirational people in their lives, they're the people that got them to take some form of action. They're the people that got them to do something.

I have nine kids. My son, he plays volleyball. After a game, if he wants to know how, he's a setter, if he wants to know how he really set, he goes to his mom. He doesn't come to me. If he had a terrible game, he comes to me, and he's like, "Hey, Dad, what'd you think?" "Oh, you're awesome. You're the best!" And he's like, "Thanks, Dad. Just tell Mom I'll text her later." Cassie will tell him, my wife, will be like, "Listen, your serve, man. What are you doing?"

Ryan: Did she play volleyball?

Chad: No.

Ryan: So she's the tough one in the family and you're the nice one? You're good cop and she's bad cop?

Chad: No, but what's interesting, Ryan, and the point of this is...

Ryan: Sorry.

Chad: They always go to her to get the truthful answer because she gets them to take action. My wife will go, "Every time you rush your serve, you fault. You've got to stop and take a moment and serves. I'm watching you." And she'll tell me that she can tell, and if you've been around the sport of volleyball too, that she can tell when he throws up the ball whether it's a 90% accuracy, whether it's going to be in or not just by the way he's tossing the ball. She's talking to him about that. He actually prefers in the long run to talk to her because she's getting him to take action to get better.

Ryan: That's what we want as people. When there's a problem in our lives or there's a dream that we're aspiring to, we want someone who's going to help us take action. You give this great presentation, you do this neat thing, and you don't get them to take any action, it was all for naught and everybody wasted their time.

Chad: What it shows, Ryan, is you really don't care. For example, if you were in a group of just ten people and you talked about how Fix Your Funnel can really change their life, make them better, showed them examples, got them excited about it, and then you said, "Alright, do whatever you want to do," and you walked out of the room, they would be like, "That dude didn't even care about us enough to give us the tools to get us to where we need to be."

But if you say, "Okay, let me show you how this works," you get on a trial and you get them to take action, they're like, "Wow, that's awesome." I promise you, you are not going on a lot of vacations for a one dollar trial. However, you're going, "I care enough about you guys. Look, you really need to do this. You need to take some form of action."

My kids know that their mom is going to get them to take some form of action to be better. Even though they may cry and complain about it, they become better because of it. Those are the types of customers and clients you want, the ones they're going to take action and become better because of it.

Ryan: Okay, so we got those five, that pulls that all together. That was the secret than for you guys getting Infusionsoft turned around. I'm saying 100% increase in sales is a pretty big deal.

Chad: It was huge. Ryan, it was huge. I don't want to pull the curtain too far back because I left Infusionsoft on very good terms, obviously tremendous tremendous respect for Clay, he's a dear friend. It was a difficult departure when I made that decision to leave because I love them. But the trusted advisor program was in jeopardy of being cancelled, like, I don't know if we're going to do this anymore, to the point of, oh, man, this is incredible.

Ryan: It was a pretty big turn around.

Chad: I can't underscore itenough. I get pretty passionate about it, pretty excited about it, because it literally changed the way we're doing it. And when I get off this webinar, I'll think to myself, "I don't think I made that clear enough."

Ryan: Well. I hate to say this because it almost seems like it's not nice to say, but I think you guys probably missed an even bigger opportunity if we could have got you guys to use the dialer and use some of our pre-call SMS and some of the other functionality. That's okay because you guys did double the sales and that's phenomenal. But there is another level.

I think I'm saying that maybe more for the people that are watching. I want you guys to know that there are levels. If you're getting some great results because you took step one like Chad and the trusted advisor program took at Infusionsoft, that's great. That is phenomenal. You guys should all go out to dinner and celebrate.

Just understand, there are additional layers that you can get to. I think my mistake that I tend to make is I try to push people too far too quick sometimes. Take it in the layers, go ahead and get that first step down where you're doing the SMS lead capture properly and you're getting that engagement. Especially if you're speaking from the stage, you really want to make sure you're refining that process when you show it. We've had people go from getting like 10-20% percent to getting 125%.

How do you get 125 percent from the stage? What you do is you do so good, people are texting the call to action to their friends. That's how you get over 100% of the room to actually text in. That's very common once you get these concepts down that Chad is talking about.

Chad: We brought up a very good point with one of our associates which is putting it in a business card. If I was an event and I spoke and I put "Text the number one to 480-787-0991" on a business card, you can also hand that out to people. People that weren't even in your presentation can still opt in for your content.

Ryan: You see right here is one of my books. I don't have copies of all my books. I found this one somewhere when we were moving to this house, I was like, "Oh, I gotta throw that up on the wall in my office. This is the first book that I published. It's called, Would You Like To Go Big?

Chad: Do you sell those book hangers?

Ryan: The screw and the drill bit I drilled the hole into the book with? No. But in the book, you'll find an SMS call to action as well. This is another way, if you got the business card, that's great. I always make sure that my book has a phone number on it and that there's at least one text message call to action in the book. If you have my book, How To Fix Your Funnel, you know there's some in there.

Not at this exact moment, but this week, I have my daughter who just graduated from high school, she's getting ready to go off the college, but I have her working with me. She just transcribed the bunch of podcast episodes, she's been doing a lot of work on trying to get our blog revamped and stuff. With that, we identified together some points and we have a new book coming out on text message marketing. It takes a lot of these different concepts. I'll make sure everybody that is here gets a chance to get a copy of that book.

There's a lot of neat stuff that can happen when you understand these concepts that Chad is talking about.

Chad: it's amazing how it will change your business. When I would teach the speakers at Infusionsoft how to get people to take action, I gave them the methodology and using the text messaging allowed them to apply it. It really changed their business. When you send out the one-pager, it talks about how to get your audience enrolled, keep them engaged, and get them to take action.

Ryan: You're gonna give them that one pager when they text in. I've just got the keyword ONE and then the phone number up here. And there's the QR code if you want to scan it with your phone you can. When they get that one sheet, you're also giving them access to a video training module from your course, which I started go through by the way.

When you were first thinking about going full-time into the business you're in right now, which is coaching, helping people that speak speak better and more effectively in terms of sales and revenue, but also moving people and helping them take action, I had the privilege of having Chad actually give me some private course trainings. As we were trying to go through his approach, I learned a ton of great stuff. When you sent me the preview of your training program, I was pretty excited about that. I'm like, "Oh cool. He got it pull it all together." That was, a year ago, it seems like it was a long time ago.

Chad: It was a couple of years ago.

Ryan: Has it been that long?

[00:59:00] Chad: Yeah, just because I'd been toying with departing from Infusionsoft and starting my own consulting firm and building this for a while. Then I had private clients reaching out and it just all came together. When you and I spent all those late nights on the phone going through and sharing, and what you were doing was actually pulling out content from me, and it all came in together in this course. You were very good at asking questions and poking holes and, "Why did you say that? Why do you think that how does that work?" And then it just came together and put it all together.

Ryan: It was exciting for me to see it come together. People have some questions on the QR codes. I just want to address that. The QR code that you see here is one that just comes from Fix Your Funnel.

If you're in Fix Your Funnel and you go to your messaging conversations, there's a tiny little gray button in the bar buttons on the right. The first one is a link, that's the link that you can put on your website so when people tap it on their mobile phone it will open up the SMS conversation ready to go with the keyword and the phone number already pre-filled in.

The one right next to that looks like a tiny little QR code. If you click on that one, it shows what you see on the screen here, which is a QR code that we generate automatically off of that same link.

The reason I'm telling about the link and the QR code is one thing that we do when we're going to an event and we want to do a lead capture, say, at a booth, we'll print up a big QR Code. I go to QRCodeMonkey.com, I think that's the site, you can search for QR Code Monkey. You can customize the colors, these dots are all squares, but you can make them circles or whatever and then put your logo in the middle of it. It's kind of cool because it's branded. I have that printed out in a two-foot by two-foot so that people can just scan it. That's really good.

Also, I put it on slides. If I'm giving my presentation, I'll put it up on the sides. It's another way for me to engage those people and see who has the iPhone versus the Androids. Some Androids support it, some don't. You should take a look at that.

Let me just look through these comments. "People check out of vids way faster than live presentation- that's my concern with the mid-pitch call to action." Live, obviously, you can see if people are doing it or not, you can pull them back in. What's your thoughts on mid-video or webinar call to action?

Chad: In video, you can do it a lot sooner because they've already shown a micro commitment by clicking on the video. In the video you can do it sooner.

Ryan: I feel like, with video, your big concern there is you've got to get them enrolled very quickly. I don't know what the actual stats are, but my feeling is you've got about three to five seconds to get the person to focus, and then every second you're earning that continued focus, or losing it.

When I'm thinking of video, here's what I'm thinking of in specific, if you get good at this, then it's everything else is going to do better, but it's an interruption based marketing. I'm thinking about the Facebook feed. I'm doing an ad with the video. You've really got to keep them engaged every second because you're earning every second. But, the good thing is, every second that you keep them, you earn more than just that next second. The longer they go, the more likely they are to watch the whole thing.

If you go look at any of your video stats on any of your videos, what you're going to see is that Plato's Principle. It's every time that way. You look and go,"Geez, how come I can't get more people to finish the video?" Well, the reason why, probably, is because your message didn't match that market or that person. You've got to say the right thing for the right person at the right time to get engagement.

When you're creating that a video, don't be afraid of the people you're going to lose. Either your message needs more work, meaning it's not enticing enough, or it's not on point enough, so you need to reduce down what you're saying or doing to get it distilled to the most powerful part. This is especially applicable for Facebook video.

But once you've done that, don't worry so much about interrupting them. If you've got the hook, and I'm assuming you're going to go more than two minutes in that kind of scenario, then you'll get them. The beautiful thing about videos as opposed to live is, live is the moment.

The past is not re-watchable in a live presentation. You only have the moment. It does have some different weaknesses and strengths. The strength is you get to see people so you can modify what you're doing to match the energy and the response of the audience. The downside is there's only that moment, there is no past.

With the video, unless you're stopping people from doing that, they have the ability to rewind. What you will see, if you do look at good video stats, is that people frequently do rewind when you come to something like that.

Don't think that you have to have them do the call to action the first time you present it. You're presenting them it to make them aware of it, and then you have to get right back into value delivery. You're going to have only your most hyper-responsive people respond in the first call to action. The point of the first call to action being midway through isn't that everybody's going to do it midway through necessarily, especially in a video or webinar, but you're making them aware that this is what they're supposed to do. In the rest of that video you have the opportunity to earn that trust.

On the trust scale, for some people, boom, it's up here real quick and so they go ahead and do it. For other people, it's going to take time. That's why you introduce it and keep it along the bottom of the video throughout the remainder of the video. That way hyper-responsive, fast-action people can go ahead and take it, they don't have to wait to the very end to get it unless that's what you want. Then the rest of them can get as you earn their trust. Do you have a different answer to that Chad? I'm curious to hear.

Chad: No, that's great. That's fantastic.

Ryan: I have a good teacher. Looking at some comments here, Michael started using Fix Your Funnel and it's crazy what they've already seen. I hope that's a good crazy. Some other people are using it for event invitations and reminders. They said the click-through rate and registration skyrocketed with the texting versus their emails. Other people are saying they get responses of, "Thanks, we'll see you there." Did you guys ever get to the point where you were, because I think that maybe you guys weren't aware of the live texting component as much?

Chad: We were just getting it.

Ryan: Okay, so did you do anything with that to engage people?

Chad: No.

Ryan: That was a missed opportunity. I want to just bring that up then, not to rub anything in, everybody learns what they learn, they get advantages from it. But the point is, for everybody else that's watching this, I want you to know that if you want to really ramp up your sales, engage the lead in a conversation at the end of that automated conversation.

The final step of your automate conversation ought to be one of two things, in my opinion, either a simple survey or an open-ended question that matches up with the context of what that conversation is so that you can engage them in a conversation right away.

I know that I have friends that use Fix Your Funnel that told me that what they'll do is they'll say, "Go ahead and text in your questions as we go along," after they do the call to action. Then they have somebody on their team sitting in the back of the room taking those and responding to them. People will be like, "Hey, how'd you do that?" It's kind of in the middle of the presentation, but it creates a different environment.

You may say, "Well, I don't want people to interrupt my presentation." Believe me, what you want is people interrupting your presentation to say, "These guys are freaking different than everybody else I've ever been around. They actually care and answer questions." That is authenticity in its purest form, the ability to engage with the audience. Don't be afraid to do that.

Chad: Well, it also allows them to build trust because they know you're not hiding anything from them either.

Ryan: Exactly. Fantastic. Thanks so much! If you haven't already, I would recommend that you get the one-pager He's got the perfect presentation one-pager. He actually covers more than he did in this. Hopefully your other video covers more on that so that they can get a little more insight on that because we didn't quite get into the whole one-pager. It looks like you got quite a bit on there, maybe you can send them a follow-up video that maybe explains a little bit about the overview of that worksheet with that if you haven't already.

Chad: Absolutely

Ryan: Fantastic. Thanks so much guys. I really appreciate you, Chad, taking the time. I know you've got a lot going on and you're doing some great work with the people you're working with. I appreciate you sharing the insights from your story at Infusionsoft and beyond.

Chad: Absolutely. Have an awesome day.

Ryan: You too.

Chad: All right. See ya.

Ryan: Thanks guys.