The Phone Funnel Framework Part 2

Transcription of Episode

[00:00:00]Ryan: Alright, welcome back! In today's discussion, I've got two special guests with me. Oli, of course, completing our conversation that we've been having about the four pillars to having a next-level business, but also talking about, in particular, the Phone Funnel Framework, which was pillar number three, correct?

Oli: That's right. Yeah.

Ryan: Ok, good! I'm getting it! Someday I'll have a next level business.

Today, though, I've got not only Oli, I also have Trent, who is my brother and my business partner at FixYourFunnel. Trent and Oli have had some pretty good discussions in private about what Oli calls the Phone Funnel Framework and Trent calls the Autopilot-

Trent: Autopilot Appointment Funnel. It's a mouthful.

Ryan: Just rolls off my tongue.

So, what we're going to be doing during this discussion, and why this is going to be so important is we've got the two masterminds or architects of these really incredible sales frameworks and they're going to be talking about similarities and [00:01:00] differences in terms of their approaches and the reasons why they do the different things they do in each of these frameworks.

With that, Oli, why don't we have you start talking about where we kind of left off, but a little more nitty-gritty on flow of that fun.Oli:Yeah.

Ryan: And then Trent, you can be interjecting here as there's a point where things are similar or different, that way we can kind of get a good fleshed-out picture for folks about the principles that guide both of these these applications.

Trent: Ok, yeah.

Oli: Yeah. Well, one of the things that we did touch on very briefly was the reason why this works so well and regardless of whether you're adopting the Phone Funnel Framework or the differences or similarities of the Autopilot Appointment Funnel, both of which are using similar mechanisms, but the overriding reason why they work so well is because the [00:02:00] behavior of the people that are going through that process.

It really capitalizes on their moments and their intent as they move through the funnel. Given the fact that we're delivering the messages to them in such a convenient way to the device that's in their pockets, knowing that they're also discovering us on that same device, we really are allowed to use that as a way to continue the conversation with them in a way that is done in a very human way.

With both automated messages and also, probably what we'll move onto here is how, when those automated messages actually tend to dry up, how that they can kind of evoke a reaction or response back into our [00:03:00] team that then can start developing those conversations.

I think what I'm saying here is that there's lots of reasons why this works really well, but one of the superpowers of this is actually getting to the conversation with people a lot sooner and quicker than you would perhaps with other mediums and modalities. This then allows you to develop those conversations in a convenient way to then ultimately have the sales conversation.

It is quite a natural flow that then leads into a human interaction, even for those people that actually fall out of the most critical path of the funnel. And, of course, all of this starts with them seeing a Facebook ad and then leading them through to watching a video and then them going through and scheduling an appointment.

Ryan: Now, you make a really good point that I want to interject on this because I think it's important for people to really grasp this concept which is, at the center of it, this idea that sales is the most critical part of your [00:04:00] business.

I think you gave a number range, Oli, but I think you said even up to like five million annual revenue. That's a range at which sales has got to be a fundamental part of the business growth.

And, for many businesses, they can sometimes try to avoid sales because it can be difficult to do, but this framework facilitates that and makes it easier to do.

That's an important concept. Sales are critical in a small business, especially at the early stages and anything you do to avoid that can actually deter you from having the success you could otherwise have. Trent?

Trent: Something that I hear a lot when I talk to small business owners, and Ryan and I both do this.

We still have conversations frequently with customers that use our software.

Some of them are not having success, and so we want to find out what's going on. Why are they not having success with this software, whereas hundreds or thousands of others are having the [00:05:00] success with the same software and same strategies we're teaching?

It usually comes down to the businesses that are struggling are exactly ones that Ryan is describing. They're ones that are afraid to have a sales team or sales conversations.

They've been sold on the idea that, "Oh, no, I want to automate my business."

That's something I think is great, automation is something is powerful and it's made our business so we have more autonomy and more growth. However, we didn't get to automation in stage one.

Stage one is you have to have a really good sales process that you can automate after it's been refined and proven and, even still, you're going to have sales people involved in that process if you want to continue to grow at a quick rate and have more autonomy in your business.

That's something that I learned early on in my business is that, when I was first getting into to starting my own business, I was in mortgage and real estate. If I didn't make sales, I wasn't making money.

So I had to focus all my time, energy, and effort on sales, not on processing paperwork or doing those types of things. For all businesses to grow, that is [00:06:00] required.

Ryan: I think as folks will listen to what you guys get into in terms of the nitty-gritty of these processes, what they're going to discover is that whole concept of, sales happen in conversations. And, what we're trying to do with automation is really remove all the inconsistencies that humans bring to the table.

Because we do bring a lot of inconsistencies, let software automation stuff fill in that gap or buttress our inability to do that as humans on a regular basis.

But, don't extract out of the process the humanity.

That's where I see a lot of people making the mistake and so they avoid these sales conversations because they're trying to extract all the humanity. They don't realize they're doing that, they're just doing it.

So that's a real great part of the Phone Funnel Framework, like Oli was saying, or the Autopilot Appointment Funnel is that what it does is it helps make the slippery slope for people to have that real quick path to getting what they want, which is why it works so well.

But, at the same time, it preserves your ability to [00:07:00] leverage automation, to reignite those conversations if they somehow get interrupted or they grow dim in the initial moment, which is, I think, the big advantage of both of these approaches over some of the other more popular approaches that you'll hear about on the internet for initiating a sales conversation.

With the cell phone number, we've got this ability to reengage if the initial engagement, as smooth as it is, if they could somehow fall out of that, we can reengage them in a way reliably that we can't with a lot of other approaches that are extremely popular, probably because they're bright and shiny, not necessarily because they're as effective as they could be.

Oli: So one of things, I was going to say, one of the things that I can definitely add to that is that the first time that we started implementing the Phone Funnel Framework and using mobile marketing in general, across the front end, the call funnels that we were using in different businesses, we were actually doing it very differently to the way that we do it today.

The very fact [00:08:00] that we were just using it, first of all, gave us a competitive advantage, even though we were using it right.

We hadn't really honed or developed it or got it to a point where it is now where it's predictable and consistent and to a point where it's very dependable. It's a very dependable way of us acquiring leads and turning them into appointments.

Ryan: You were going to make a point, I want you to make that point. But why don't we go down that journey. I think that would be the most natural place.

Go through the evolution for both of you in developing this framework. Because we gave them the basics. If you're listening you know the basic flow is Facebook ad, lead ad to capture information, push them through a text message to a video on a web page.

Okay, that's the basic structure of it. Obviously, then the final few yards is getting them to set an appointment to talk to a member of our team.

But the evolution of this is where a lot of people will get hung up. That concept right there that's pretty easy. Anybody go implement that to [00:09:00] some degree, but the nuances in what you learn as you guys went through the evolution of this.

So Oli, since you were just talking, why don't you go ahead and finish that and then, Trent, talk about the evolution of the process for you.

Okay, you know you got to have a Facebook ad, you know you're going to do a lead ad, you know the questions you're going to ask first. Full name, email, phone number, and, "May we send you the video immediately via text message? Yes/no?" We push them to a video, boom.

That at all seems pretty simple. What was the evolution for you? And how is it different from just that face value thing?

And, if you had that other point you want to make, go ahead and make that too.

Oli: So, for me, when we knew we could capitalize on lead ads in the way that we know we can today, we first of all took an asset that we'd already got that was already working for us.

We already had an automated webinar that was about 90 minutes thereabouts in length and, [00:10:00] simply put, and this is a little bit of advice for anybody listening to this, by the way. If all you did was do what I am about to tell you that I did as my first step, that's a good first step.

Because some people procrastinate, they deliberate, and they protract the process of actually getting the work done to figure out, to get enough data to understand what you should pivot and change on to make something better to iterate on.

Ryan: Yeah, Oli, let's get into that more too as you get along because that's a really important point that some people struggle with.

Oli: Yeah. So I think the key thing here-

Ryan: So you have this 90 minute video.

Oli: Yeah. We had a 90 minute video that was already working as an automated webinar that we were throwing in everybody from mobile and desktop and we were seeing decreasing results for some of the reasons that we spoke about on the last podcast.

You should definitely go back and listen to that, specifically about that If you're interested in that.

And what we did we took that asset and we simply put it onto a landing page. We ran the front end of [00:11:00] the funnel in the way that you've described with the lead ads, with the text messages, with the, "Can we instantly text you a link to the video?" and we drove people directly to that video.

Of course, that meant that then we got people to that video, but what we noticed was a number of different things.

First of all, we were very surprised by how many people actually said that they would like us to instantly text them a link to the video.

Although it would not necessarily defy conventional wisdom and popular belief, the fact that they're already on a mobile phone anyway, because we're targeting the ads purely to people on a mobile device, but we were just very surprised that people were very willing to actually get that value that they're requesting sooner and quicker and faster.

Of course, it makes a lot more sense when you aggregate a lot more data and understand the psychology behind all this stuff, but our first attempt was to just get people to this video and a [00:12:00] lot of people said, "Yes, text me a link to the video."

But then we got to a bit of a stumbling block with that because of course so many people would not watch the video, wouldn't watch the video in its entirety because it was like 90 minutes in length before we actually made a call to action.

That was our first part of this.

The first evolution was we got lots of leads at a much lower lead cost than we were getting previously, plus we were getting the additional contact information of a phone number, specifically a mobile phone number that we weren't getting before when we were doing what we were doing previously. And, we were getting a lot more attention on the video because people wanted us to text it to them from the get-go.

There was some bits of that that were really good. And so-

Ryan: Were you getting any sales?

Oli: We were getting some appointments, but in terms of how we-

Ryan: So appointment was the call to action, you got some appointments, but you knew it wasn't where it could be.

Oli: Yeah, and actually then what we did, so [00:13:00] that was the kind of the first step. Low lead cost, good contact information, poor consumption.

Ryan: Now, I just want to clarify this because you're glazing over it because it's like, you know it so well, it isn't even a thought. But right here, what did you do with those leads?

If they didn't set an appointment, you just ignored them, right? You're just like, "Oh this isn't working because people aren't setting appointments." Correct?

Oli: Yeah, just right from the first time we did this, yes.

Ryan: Okay. Well, I'm sorry, I assume too much, Oli.

Oli: Yeah, no. Actually that's the thing.

Ryan: You did call the leads though, right?

Oli: Right, right. Yeah.

But here's the thing is that this is one of the reasons why I just wanted to preface what I said about the implementation of this from the get-go.

If all you did was take an existing asset, put it onto a page, and did things in the way that I described through both mine and Trent's way of doing this, then you are going to get [00:14:00] some results.

You are going to get some data and, more importantly, you're capturing the right information to enable you to do follow-up afterwards. Whether you decide to do or not, I would advise that you do.

Actually, we very quickly pivoted towards changing what we were doing on the page because we learned very quickly, and that's the beauty of running traffic online these days, is that traffic really isn't a problem to get. You can buy a lot of media, that's not hard.

And so when you see what's happening, when you see the data, you can make decisions on that very quickly some to evolve it and make it better much faster and sooner than you could have any other time in the past.

Ryan: So how many leads or how long did you let it run before you realized, oh, something needs to change?

Oli: So we have two stages of testing, which I think you asked me to go into the nitty-gritty, so I'll mention this quickly.

We have what's called an incubation period with running Facebook ads. We have a four day incubation period where we don't touch [00:15:00] any of the creative that we we put in, we don't adjust any budget, we don't turn any ad sets off. We don't change anything. We run everything for four days as an incubation period.

After that four days, we then turn off things that are obviously not working and continue to run things that are working.

We then do some budgets optimization on those that are working and then we run it for a further 10 days.

In total there's been 14 days of testing from the first time that we started a new campaign to evaluating the results.

The reason why it's 14 days, and this twists some people's minds up, is because it can sometimes take that long for people to filter all the way through your funnel from beginning to end.

Just because something's not working in the first few days doesn't mean that somebody's not going to convert into an appointment and then ultimately a sale very quickly. So, even 14 days for some funnels can still be quite short depending upon the lead to [00:16:00] schedule call time, but that's our process for testing.

4 day incubation period followed by another 10 days of-

Ryan: I'm gonna ask you to do something very difficult for entrepreneurs. I'm gonna ask you to pause for a moment and I'm gonna ask Trent now to tell us about his initiation.

Your start was a little bit different from Oli's because initially, you weren't actually sending people to a video, where you Trent?

Trent: We were, but not in the same way we evolved into.

So, initially, what we did is the same thing. Facebook lead ad, asking for permission to text, but we did it wrong the first time.

The first time we did it, we said,"Can we send you a text?" Like, outright asking, "Can we text you?"

And, of course, most people said no. I think about 50 percent said yes, so about half, maybe a little bit below half, but we changed that over the first couple of ads that we ran. We tested out like five different lead ad forms with different questions and the one that ended up being the best...

And we didn't actually talk about a video in the ad itself, but in the form itself, we said, [00:17:00] "Would you like to receive the video immediately by text?"

And so we didn't even have any reference to a video before that, but just by asking that question, and they were interested in the ad that we'd ran, they said yes about 80-85% of the time.

Just by changing the question to say, "Would you like to receive the video immediately? Oh, and, by the way, by text?" That's just kind of the opt-in that we're using to get permission to text them.

Ryan: You're not saying-

Trent: You're asking for them to give permission.

Ryan: You didn't really say, "by the way", but you're just emphasizing that-

Trent: No, no. I'm just emphasizing that was a goal we had was to get permission to text them, but we focused on the two benefits of, get this video and get it immediately. That helped our conversion to go from about 45-50% up to 80-85%.

Ryan: Ok, Trent. I'm gonna have you go into the rest of your process. But real quick, Oli, did you experiment with the question or did you kind of start off on the right foot?

I can't remember where you started in terms of your question on asking for permission.

Oli: Well it was actually, this is the benefit of having such a close-knit community is [00:18:00] certainly we're very aligned and spend a lot of time with each other.

Trent was actually sharing with me at that time that evolution of what they were going through and what they were finding.

Ryan: Very cool. So you got to start off right.

Oli: Yeah, so I modeled exactly. Like, oh, that's an interesting thing. Well, I'm doing this thing with the video. And of course that makes sense for me to just start with that question right from the beginning because you've already proven that to work better for you.

Ryan: Well, see, that's a good lesson, too, for folks.

Try and get to the source of why you do things the way you do.

Oli didn't just say, "Oh, Trent, you're doing that and that works good? Great."

Trent: "I'll copy that."

Ryan: Trent had shared the data and Oli said, "Okay, the data fits. I understand why you got to that evolution. Now I'm going to use that."

And that's a really important distinction. It may seem very small, but I see so many people doing what they see somebody else do, a Guru or whatever, and they don't even know the data behind it.

They don't know, [00:19:00] why are they doing it that way? Is that the final test or is that one of the tests? You need to know that data before you go ahead and start modeling something that you're like, "Oh that's working. I don't know why that's working, but I'm going to go ahead and model that."

You don't always need to understand everything, but when you can, it's really important.

Okay, Trent, you got that question down. What did you send people to initially when you when you did text them?

Trent: Initially we started out by using a webinar that was automated at noon and 7 p.m. So we kind of pushed them to say, "Okay. Here's the webinar, go here at noon or so 7 p.m."

We did that for a couple weeks, but immediately as soon as a lead came in, we had an outsourced sales team of six people pounding the phone. They'd call them 10 times in the first five days, just pounding the phone.

What we found out was that people were answering the phone like, "Who's this? What's this about?"

Because it was too soon. We were just jumping in.

I came from a mortgage industry where if you get a new lead, a mortgage leads, you've jump on it right away. You call within five minutes, [00:20:00] within 30 minutes, and within three hours. Three touches on the first three hours, otherwise someone else is going to get them.

I went in with that mentality of, we'll just pound the phones, and it didn't work out quite so well. People got turned off that we called them and started asking questions like, "I don't know who you are. Why are you calling me?" It was very interesting because I assume they knew that they opted in.

Ryan: I think I remember us having a conversation about this, too, at that time and I think I... no, I must have written it. I wrote the paper after because we used data from-

Trent: It was definitely after the webinar, yeah.

Ryan: But that was a thought that we were going through and we had been discussing. I remember at that point, you and I discussed, "Look it, I don't know if the scheduled webinar is the thing to do. I know everybody's doing the automated webinar."

And I know, Oli, we've talked about this before, but that was the thing bouncing around in my mind at that time.

We are the Netflix generation. People don't wait scheduled stuff, for the most part. If they do, they'll sometimes wait longer and then binge because they want to do it on their terms and [00:21:00] in their time.

So, "That's the new reality that people have. I think we shouldn't do the scheduled, Trent. I think we should try and send people directly to it." At that point, I think you had said, "Yeah, I think that's good. You have a webinar, let's send them to it."

And then you sent them to a webinar that you guys had been doing that had been producing results.

I think that's an important thing that Oli is saying here, too. He had an asset that he had developed that was producing results, but the results were diminished.

Trent: Not optimal.

Ryan: The methodology of getting people to it, right?

Trent: Yeah. So that's the other, that's exactly the point. We noticed that making them wait was not really converting at the level we expected.

So we did that test of, once we send them to a webpage with this 45-minute sales video, we called it a total replay of the webinar, and see if that improves our conversion.

And instantly, we saw conversion go up.

Ryan: But that was still with pounding the phones, wasn't it? You hadn't introduced the-

Trent: They were at the same time. The phones they were making really that many sales. We were making more [00:22:00] sales by one guy with appointments than all six of them pounding the phone.

We pretty soon realized, this isn't working. So after about a month of doing that, basically, I think after a month or two months of doing the phone calls, we said, "Hey, just hold off on the phone calls. We're going to test something without doing outbound phone calls."

Ryan: Okay. Here's another principal- I'm not going to call out every possible, but this is another important principle.

When you've established a status quo, you maintain the status quo until you verify that the new approach is going to replace it.

Some people will get excited about the Phone Funnel Framework or the Autopilot Appointment Funnel, they're like, "Okay. I'm doing that." And they drop everything else they're doing-

Trent: Stop everything.

Ryan: To jump into that. Oli, would you advise against doing that? Or do you think that that's still good because the data is so good on the Phone Funnel Framework?

Oli: Well, the thing for me is, you need to make... Well, first of all, where ever you're getting your information from needs to be substantiated with data and testing.

Some people can't always compare my [00:23:00] version 17 to their version 1. Although the psychology is proven, tried, and tested to work here, clearly the messaging can't go awry when it comes to your market.

We're talking about the component parts and elements of the reasons why, regardless of whichever framework you use, why this works so well. But actually, we're providing a canvas and a sandbox for people to play in.

In doing so, you can't ever then forget that you need to still have a strong message and still do the right things in the right order to get the best results.

I think that's really important because with us, we definitely made small increments to what we were doing. I know that the next step that we took actually meant that we actually had too many [00:24:00] appointments.

We actually took a step to a point where we changed the asset that the main video to more of a video sales letter format that perhaps was more influential, perhaps had more persuasion, and got people to the point where there was a call to action sooner.

But when we actually we have-

Ryan: Okay, so that's good. This is a concept, too, that I want people to understand that you guys are employing here because it doesn't have a name for most people, but what I've identified them as is accelerators and filters.

Initially you identified that your 90 minute video was actually a filter, but not in the way you wanted it to be. So you said, Okay, that is slowing the progress down too far. I want to accelerate it slightly." So you modified your video type to be this video sales letter, which was how long initially?

Oli: 25 minutes.

Ryan: Okay. You went from a 90 minute video to a 25 minute one, which really was a [00:25:00] condensed version, probably, of your 90-minute webinar.

So where people didn't have an appointment, you're going, "Oh, wait. People don't have an appointment, I'm interrupting them. I'm getting them through on the slippery slope, but I don't necessarily have 90 minutes of their time and attention, so I'm losing them. I'm going to make this condensed and more powerful so it'll act as an accelerator."

And so when you guys go through the process of implementing your own version of these sales processes, what you have to be aware of are these concepts of accelerators and filters. You got to know where to put each one.

So you create an accelerator that's actually too good, what was your next step?

And Trent, be thinking about this as you're waiting.

What were your accelerators and filters that you guys employed through your next phase. And, Oli, so you got this 25-minute video. Suddenly you got appointments up the yin-yang, now what do you do?

Oli: Yeah, so now really it was a case, and of course, just to qualify, the number of appointments didn't mean [00:26:00] that our close ratio on the appointments that we were getting continued to stay the same as they were before.

The conversion ratio went down.

Why did it go down? Because of the fact that the quality of the people that were scheduling the appointments went down.

So if everything would have stayed constant, and this is something important to acknowledge, that the close-ratio on the appointments stayed the same, which at the time was about 27%.

If it was always 27% and we just got more appointments, fantastic! We wouldn't have changed a thing.

Ryan: You would have hired another person.

Oli: Of course, we would have just kept on hiring more people, setting more appointments, and having a solid close ratio.

What we noticed when the close ratio started to go down and the feedback that we started to have was that these leads were weren't as good quality.

And the reason why they were not as good quality is because we were not actually slowing people [00:27:00] down in the process to enable them to consume all of the information before we actually asked them to go ahead and schedule.

Ryan: How soon in the 25-minute video were they're getting an opportunity to start scheduling an appointment?

Oli: Well, yeah. So we brought it in probably about, I think it was about halfway through. Which is okay to a degree, but there's another mechanism that we put in a little bit later.

What I want to talk about here is the concept of using something called a primer video.

And again, this was through some collaboration with Trent. When we were talking about this, we put in a step that they went to before they got to what we call the "Main Event" video.

We put this bridge page in there from when they got the text message delivered to them and they click that text message, the first thing that they went to was called a primer video. [00:28:00] That primer video is only about 2 minutes in length, but what it did was it set up what it was that they were just about to watch.

So it actually slowed them down, it resold them on why they've requested the information in the first place. It was a face to camera video, so it injected some personality and a bit of know, like, and interest elements in there as well. And, it pre-frames the video and that it was going to be 25 minutes in length and that they should listen to it all the way to the end of the video.

It explained in that video what it was that they were going to discover as part of it and then gave them a call to action to just click the button below to get to it.

So that step alone meant that we naturally lost some people that would have just clicked to the main event video without going to that and just clicked away again because they've didn't consumed it.

And, it stopped people just going to the main event video and clicking the button to just go and schedule an appointment only 5 or 10 minutes into the [00:29:00] video.

There's some factors that help for sure.

Ryan: So, this primer video then becomes a filter that essentially makes sure that only the people that should be going to the next stage go to the next stage, but also, at the same time, acts as an accelerator for those who are actually our ideal client.

They are going to go, "Oh, yeah. That is for me. That is what I'm looking for."

Whereas those that it wouldn't be for, they can clarify and then go, "Okay. yeah. No, that's not for me. I misunderstood. I'm not going to spend the next X number of minutes going through the main event."

So Trent, what was your evolution then from sending them to your webinar to where you went next?

Trent: Well, I have to give credit where credit is due. It actually wasn't my idea. Oli and I talked about it, but it was my business partner in that business.

He's like, "Hey, maybe we should do a short video." Because once we switched from the scheduled webinar to the watch the video immediately, we did see kind of a drop-off, like Oli said, in conversion, [00:30:00] actually in sales because the quality of leads wasn't as good.

He was like, "Actually, let's resell them on why they should watch the video."

He's the one that created this two minute, he did like a whiteboard explainer, we called it the explainer video, the webinar explainer. It basically explains what's in the webinar and, like Oli said, it resells them on why they should invest the time to watch it to the end and it gets the highlight of, here's the five benefits you get from doing this and watching this.

In our case, we're selling a business opportunity, so we're telling them why are they want to get this business, here's the benefits of it, here's how it works, here's why it benefits you and the customer and insurance companies.

It was really just to get them to be sold on watching the whole thing.

Now, there is another point that we also saw a drop-off in conversion. And so we did that webinar explainer, and then they'd watch the webinar.

In our case, we didn't have a button to schedule, they had to text the word "success". And the reason we did that, we had an extra hurdle, is it made it harder for people to just jump into an appointment.

They had to watch 40 minutes of that 45 minute [00:31:00] webinar in order to hear that call to action. The last five minutes were reiterating, "Hey, now text the word "success" and we'll schedule a one-on-one call where we'll go over all the details."

At this point, we haven't told them the price. We've only sold them on all the benefits, explained how it works, gone into detail, and at the end, we're just trying to get them to schedule an appointment without knowing the price.

There's no filtering there at that point. And we saw that we were getting a lot of people scheduling and as soon as they heard the price, they jumped off immediately.

So our sales people were having a lower conversion because people weren't quite ready. Because we were getting appointments at 10 to 15 dollars an appointment, we were like, we can afford to get better quality appointments.

Have less appointments overall, or even have more within our budget so that we don't have to have more sales people, and our conversion and our value per lead will actually go up.

So what we did is in that process of them texting the word "success", they get texted back a link to a page to schedule. But, before the scheduling page is a video.

That video basically [00:32:00] says, at the very top, it says, "Watch just before you schedule," and then they watch this 2-minute video. Again, it goes over, It's the face of my business partner talking to them so again, creating that personality connection.

They watched the webinar with him in it and now they're seeing him in this video and he's sitting in his car and he says, "Hey, you guys, this isn't for everyone. I know this is a life-changing business for me and for a lot of people I've helped, but this isn't for everyone. Here's who it's for and here's who it's not for."

So we created a list of things we saw, common themes of people that weren't going to be a good fit. He basically sold them on not scheduling and sold those that were a good fit on scheduling.

At that point, we actually gave them a price range of the low end and the high end of this business and how to get started in it.

And that actually helped us to reduce, again, the number of appointments and increase the quality and that obviously helps the sales people be more excited.

To be honest, a salesperson who is getting 15 appointments a day and not doing any outbound phone calls is super excited anyway.

But, if we can increase the quality of the appointments instead of going from 1 [00:33:00] in 15 or 1 in 20 to close to now going to 1 in 8, for them that's like a whole new ball game and it makes them more excited to actually do the sales and show up every day.

So there's a lot of things that we learned along a process, but basically it was, at each stage, we looked at the numbers. What do the numbers tell us based on this number? Okay, we got to go back here and adjust this to increase the quality.

Just like Oli found that same process works for him, It's always about looking at the data and seeing what the data tells us and then trying to test something to see if we can affect that outcome to be more favorable for our desired outcome.

Ryan: So this is really why I wanted both of you guys to be on this episode of the podcast.

I think it's really critical for people to get a feel for the play-by-play, so to speak, the blow-by-blow as you guys are going through this process of getting to what is now a refined framework or concept.

The reason why is because even if you start with the recipe right, you're going to need to make adjustments. So understanding how these [00:34:00] two went through the process of making adjustments as they were refining what the individual business needs is important.

You'll notice that in this case that Trent is talking about, they're making adjustments based on the feedback they're getting from the prospects and customers.

That's why it's so critical to have conversations. In conversations, your salespeople are going to be most valuable.

When I say salesperson, last time I also mentioned it could be a customer support rep or it could just be a team member. They don't have to be doing hardcore sales to be called the sales person in this concept.

But what they're doing is they're going to be getting all sorts of feedback, and so those people that struggle or have some sort of issue, that feedback is super critical to refine the process. You'll notice that Trent said, they were hearing people weren't quite ready, or the wrong people are on the phone.

So through discussion, they were able to be able to determine, who do we want to filter out? And who do we want to accelerate?

They use this concept of filtering and accelerating in the same device. It's not like you have to have a separate [00:35:00] device for filtering and a separate device for accelerating, you can actually do that in the same thing.

So, this 2 minute pre-appointment setting video did a filtering again and an acceleration. Texting the word "success" to the phone number was a filter because it made it more difficult to do, not very difficult, obviously, because texting isn't hard, but more difficult than just clicking on a button and going over to do that.

That shouldn't be done for every business, a lot of these things that Trent's talking about and that Oli will talk about are just filters or Lego pieces, essentially, you can mix into your specific funnel when you start applying this general concept.

I think that's really critical for people to understand that the general concept is clear.

Now, which pieces you need for accelerators and which pieces you need for filters is going to be determined through actual experimentation, so to speak, by putting people through a process, seeing what kind of feedback you get, what kind of results you produce, and then knowing that [00:36:00] "Oh, these are the levers. These are the switches that I can play with in order to fine-tune this for my specific business."

Trent: You explained that much better, Ryan, so you should just do all the talking going forward.

Ryan: You guys are the ones that know all the stuff.

So Oli, what was the next phase for you guys? You got this primer video-

Trent: Once we've got the primer video in there, we then actually did something which was very complicated and, in hindsight, something that I think we introduced into the process a bit too soon because we've seen this work with other things that we've done in the past.

I'll explain it in a few moments.

And actually this is what happens when you go to the extreme of actually getting too complicated.

So what we did was because we use FixYourFunnel, and we use Infusionsoft, we're able to use trackable links with the [00:37:00] link from the text message to the primeer video.

Then we're able to use trackable links from people that have got to the primer video, but they haven't scheduled, meaning that they may well have gone through and they clicked through to the main event video, but they haven't yet gone ahead and taken the next milestone in the funnel. Which, of course, is watching the main event video and actually going to schedule.

Naturally, we had this set up that we have a sequence of text messages and emails. Don't forget, not just text messages, but also emails as well that we're driving people back to go and watch the main event video.

There are only so many ways that you can say to somebody, "Hey, it's so and so from this business, I noticed that you checked out the video. What did you think of the concept? Here's a link to go back and check it out in case you missed it."

Or something like that. There's only so many ways that you can cut that.

One of the things that we [00:38:00] then started to do was actually measure the consumption of people that were clicking those links to the main event video of how much of the video that they were watching out the 25 minutes.

Now that was way, way, way, way too complicated and actually something that I don't encourage people, albeit, from a technology standpoint, you can do and some people may feel like, I've heard of that before.

I can understand why you'd want to measure if they watched, they started watching the video, or they watch 25%, 50% or whatever, how much and it makes it very easy with FixYourFunnel to do that.

But, just because you can, doesn't necessarily mean you should.

I mean that's just a rule in business and in life.

You need to look at this and consider, I've got a team of people implement this stuff for me, not everybody has the benefit of that. So we made this elaborate and wildly over-complicated as that iteration.

We thought that we could then conditionally [00:39:00] send different messages rather than the the continual pushes back, based upon what they've watched and what they hadn't watched and actually to do some level of lead scoring that would then enable us to actually do an outbound call to those people if our conversation starters from the text messages were not necessarily driving back to them texting us back.

Just all transparency, that was just way too complicated.

The whole point of this, as we stand today and talk about it, is that this is a very simple funnel. It is one traffic source, one conversion mechanism, and one sales mechanism.

That is the reason why it fundamentally works so well, especially when you introduce this the people because they can see that they can implement it themselves.

They can see the psychology of the reason why it works so well and in actual fact, it just makes sense and the data and the results from this standpoint, we wouldn't use [00:40:00] anything else if we needed to drive people to sales appointments.

So, that was kind of a mistake of ours that we made and I just wanted to share that with you because I didn't want this to come across as like this whole process was just roses for us.

You grow and you learn these things as you make progress.

Ryan: No, I appreciate that.

People need to understand that you're going to make some mistakes and don't get discouraged by it.

I had friends you know that are like, "Oh, yeah, I'm going to start doing some marketing," and then somebody complains to them or says, 'Why are you sending me this?" And then they shut everything down.

You're going to make mistakes. You might write the wrong thing. You might say the wrong thing, people might get upset, whatever.

All you can do is learn from it, move forward, and I think we talked about it in an earlier conversation, I think our first one we have in this series, where you just learn and you move forward.

It's just a feedback mechanism, but one of the things that's really important that you said, Oli, that I want to re-emphasize for everybody is start simple.

[00:41:00] Only add complexity to the degree that it facilitates the end goal.

If I was getting not enough appointments and I needed to understand why I might add the video tracking in, not so I can send them a message that they saw my key point, but to signal to my sales person, "Call them. Find out why they didn't set an appointment."

So I might use it more for purely research purposes to be able to figure out what's my next move in order to make this thing work. That's an important understanding: keep it as simple as possible when it comes to tracking.

There's a lot of track points, right? There's the, I got the lead. Okay. Boom. We got a track point. I sent them a text, I know that. They clicked on the link, I know when they do. They get to the page, do they start watching the video? I can know that.

I can have all these track points, but these track points shouldn't necessarily be used to automate [00:42:00] communication, but they should absolutely be used to be able to learn what's going on so that you can make an informed decision on your next phase of, is there something else to change?

Is there a filter I need to add? Is there an accelerator I need to add?

In your case, like you're saying, you just did it because you could, more than you should.

Oli: Yeah, and you've got to catch yourself just in business when you find yourself in that situation, especially when it comes to marketing automation.

And we talked a little bit about over-automating some things and this was the big thing for me that I just want to mention as we kind of bring things together here.

At this point we made two very key distinctions.

The first was that we wanted to, as we got more qualified leads actually scheduling on our scheduler, we use [00:43:00] ScheduleOnce but you can use AppointmentCore or anything else that you use. Once they made that schedule, the next page that they saw was a page that we didn't have.

So the next Evolution that we had was after they scheduled, not before, but after they scheduled, we had a questionnaire.

That questionnaire allowed us to further pre-qualify people so that our sales team were more pre-armed with the information and the ingredients of exactly how we could actually help these people, exactly what the current situation was that they're in, and what their desired situation, and ultimately, whether or not the gap between those two things would be our services that we've got to offer.

And it also had some very key questions in there that got them to complete. Either something like, "yes, I have the financial resources to invest in the growth of my business," or, "I have [00:44:00] access to the financial resources to grow my business," or, "no. I don't have any financial resources."

That is a key, what I would classify as, a bucket question for disqualification. Somebody that says, out and out, that they have no financial resources to invest in the growth of business and yet, in the video that they watched as the precursor to get them to where they are, it clearly said the type of people that this was for and also who it was not for, then there's an incongruity between that person.

Now, there's a possibility that they said that by accident, they may put something different on their questionnaire, and we give them the opportunity to say, "Hey, we received your application," and that's the way we frame it, by the way.

We don't just frame it as a an appointment, we actually frame it as an application. When they do that, we can then send them a text and say, "Hey, good news. We got your application, but I just wanted to qualify something with you. You mentioned this [00:45:00] on the questionnaire, is that right?"

And it's just a normal, yes or no? Like, "No, actually I don't have any Financial Resources," great. We can delete you out of the calendar and give you and point you in the right direction for some other resources that can benefit you.

Just, again, to qualify people. That helped. That helps a lot.

Ryan: The power of the survey or the questionnaire, too, is not only in the answers, but in the asking of the question alone.

When you ask that question, it begins a thought process within the the prospect that they cannot avoid. That's the reason why, when you do these surveys and questionnaires as part of your accelerators or your filtering, you want to be thoughtful about the question.

It's worth spending an hour working on a question because the right question, and again, I know that can create people where they do nothing. I don't want to scare you too much, but I just want you to be thoughtful, at least, about the question because the question can really make a big difference.

I know, Oli, you're running out of time. If you need to drop off, [00:46:00] you can, because I know you've got family commitments, but I wanted to hear Trent now.

Trent, where did you take it from there? Because I feel like these conversations have been really, really powerful helping people see the evolution of the process.

Did you guys end with the two minute appointment video or have you changed anything since then?

Trent: The only other thing I would say is a major change for us is that when people texted "success", we put them into a campaign to follow up with them if they didn't click the link.

If they clicked the link, but didn't schedule, they get in a different campaign, one that's a little bit more, "Hey, I noticed you went to the scheduling page, did you not find a time that works for you?" And we have two or three text messages to go out over the next few days.

We're stopping their progress in any other campaign that they're in, and we focus on, now, the current stage that they're in.

We started adding these different layers because we saw some drop off with, okay was this just a drop off because they don't have the financial resources to invest? Or is it because they couldn't find a time that works for them and they forgot to come back?

[00:47:00] We added these extra buffers in there just to make sure we were catching the right people.

Sometimes they text back saying, "Oh, no, this isn't a good fit for me," great. We just archive that person or the campaign and then move on.

On top of that, we found out that by following up with them a couple days later, some people would text in "success" and forgot they got the text back and they just didn't do anything with it and forgot. They'll say like, "Oh, no, I forgot to do that," and then click the link and schedule.

You're kind of doing this re-capture or re-marketing through text message for people that showed interest, got to a certain stage in the process, but didn't fulfill that stage. So we kept them in that campaign specific to that stage until the next trigger was happening.

Where they texted "success", clicked the link, clicked the link but didn't schedule, these triggers are easy to automate, but also feel personal in the follow-up.

Ryan: I think this is a good place to wrap up, too, is talking about texting.

I mean, Oli, you mentioned it casually because it's so second nature to you. Trent, you also kind of were pretty casual about this, but this [00:48:00] conversation-

Trent: I'm sorry.

Ryan: No, not in a bad way.

Trent: I know.

Ryan: Just, you guys are so used to it, but a lot of people may not be aware of what we mean when we say "conversation starter" or, how do I create these text messages?

Because the natural inclination is to use texting like email.

That means people are going to try to get people-

Trent: Talk at people.

Ryan: They're going to pound it on people, right? And say, "Hey, I didn't get that, I didn't get that, I didn't get that."

Now what you want to do is you want to be optimistic. This is something I learned even from our email marketing days, but be optimistic about the reason that they didn't do the action that you were hoping that they would do.

Which means, be optimistic that something came up. They got interrupted, they forgot, whatever. Not that they're not interested.

For most people, that's actually the case. They got interrupted, something else came up, they were starting to do it and then someone asked them a question.

Those are the most common reasons people don't finish a process that they start, not that they're not interested or not qualified. But if they're taking specific actions and, like Trent said, he reserved it all the way until they said "success".

Which means [00:49:00] they saw the ad, they clicked through, they got the text message, they watch the primer video or the Whiteboard video, then they watch the longer video 40 minutes in, and then saw and texted "success."

They're pretty qualified at that point, and that's where we're wanting to try and follow up with the texting. But when we do that, what you want to think about is, what do they know at this point or what should we expect that they know, and what conversation can I have based on that Information?

If someone has done the text and clicked to set the appointment, we know that they went through all this other process and then they said, "Hey, I'm actually interested in having a conversation with somebody," but they didn't complete it.

Now we have a context, we want to be inviting them to do that or we want to ask them an open-ended question that would help us to understand why they haven't.

Those are two really important concepts to keep in mind as you're going through and thinking about, "Okay, do I want to follow up with a text message? If I do a text message, how do I do it so I'm not an annoying pest but a welcome guest?

And the best way to do that that [00:50:00] I know is to keep in mind the context of what you know about where they are in this process and this journey and then give them an opportunity to express what it is that might be stopping them or invite them to take that next step in a way that respects where they are in this whole process and what they do know.

If you can do that, empathy is probably your biggest skill that will help you as you go through these marketing processes and these sales processes, is getting into the shoes of that person and really trying to imagine from their perspective.

The people that I see the struggle the most don't do that. They only come from their own perspective.

Oli, you have any closing thoughts before you got to drop, if you haven't dropped already?

Oli: Yeah. I think it's worth wrapping things up where we got to there.

I think that there's nuances between the things that we do, but fundamentally the reason why they work so well is both the psychology of this stuff and the technology side that allows us to be able to do this, which I'm, every single [00:51:00] day. Extremely thankful and grateful for.

That we're able to do this in the way that we can and actually do things in a way that evokes a conversation.

I know we can talk about this again, perhaps in another podcast, but it is such a huge differentiator to the way that a lot of people are doing what they're doing.

If you're in a crowded Marketplace and you're doing the same kind of marketing as other people, if you adopt this kind of approach, this is a lot higher level.

It doesn't put as much pressure on people and it naturally involves into a conversation to actually overcome the challenges, fears, frustrations that these people have before they engage and ultimately buy from you.

You're going to be lightyears ahead of anybody and quite honestly, it's very difficult to compete with somebody that's prepared to take that time and allow the marketing to do all the heavy [00:52:00] lifting for you.

Then you come in with a, "Hey, does it make sense to have a chat?" Or, "What questions did you have about this? I'm happy to help."

And I think maybe in the next podcast we can go into that about conversation starters and the different types of conversation starters there are, and those other good things as well.

Ryan: Done deal. We'll do it. That'll be the next conversation.

Oli: Love it. Thanks Ryan.

Ryan: Thanks for being here.

Trent, any closing remarks that you have from this whole discussion?

Trent: Oli just said it all. I mean, I don't need to say anything more, but I will say more, though. Just one thing.

The one thing that I recognized from this is that if you come from a place of curiosity when you're creating for your business, instead of just trying to judge things too soon, it allows you to find solutions that you wouldn't have otherwise found.

That's something I learned from Ryan early on.

When we jump to a conclusion too soon, we shut down the opportunity to create. So one of the things that's key in this [00:53:00] process of finding out what works for your business and for your funnel is be curious about the data, be curious about the results, versus jumping to judgment.

Asking, why is it that way? What would make it different? Versus, all this doesn't work.

That's the thing that the dams all progress for small business owners, is when they come to the conclusion too soon that something doesn't work versus being curious about, what could I do different? And, what was the reason this happened this way? And, how could I affect that differently?

Remain in that state of curiosity as you're creating your business.

Don't jump to judgment too soon, because then you shut off the ability to create more.

That's just something that's a key principle that I'm glad that Ryan helped me understand early on.

My thought is always, let's just analyze and judge, analyze and judge, versus let's remain curious so we can find more solutions that might possibly be there versus saying, no, I'm going to do this one thing now, and if it doesn't work, then I'm done.

Ryan: That, if you guys, hopefully everybody is, I guess if you're listening now, you stayed to the [00:54:00] end. The people that didn't, didn't get that.

That was that's a real gem, Trent. I appreciate you articulating that.

Well, thanks so much guys! I really, really appreciate you guys for sharing so much. I know a lot of people probably would pay for this kind of information, I'm grateful you guys were able to share it with people who are willing to invest in themselves and listen to this.

Fantastic. Okay, I'll schedule our next one, this has been fantastic.

Hope you guys have enjoyed it as much as I have. This was a real treat for me to hear these two great marketers and sales engineers to be able to lay out for us some really important stuff.

Again, I appreciate it so much. Thanks Trent, thanks Oli for being on. Thank you for listening.

Trent: Thank you.

Ryan: This was fantastic.