Sales Promotion Strategies

Sales Promotion Strategies: Full Episode Transcript

 

Get ready to find your recipe for success from America’s top business owners here at Onward Nation with your host, Stephen Woessner. 

 

Holy bananas, Onward Nation. I am Stephen Woessner, CEO of Predictive ROI. Your host for the last six years for Onward Nation. And today’s episode is going to be a solo cast, actually the next two episodes. So today, if you’re listening to this, the day that it went live is Wednesday, November 17th, 2021. And the next episode on November 24th will also be a solo cast. So I’m doing that for two, actually multiple really important reasons. As far as doing this solo cast first, let’s think about it from a content perspective. 

 

One, I should also say too, that in addition to the audio version that you might be listening to right now, I’ve also recorded a video version. So, I am recording the video and the audio at the same time for an important reason: I’m going to narrate the content that we’re going to be stepping through the best that I can, but it is also visual. So, if you would like the video of this solo cast, it’s available in the show notes for today’s episode on our website, predictive roi.com. So you’ll be able to see all of the illustrations and drawings, models, and strategies I’ll describe in detail. Still, you’ll obviously be able to see them visually as I’m drawing them out and stepping through the content. 

 

Listen to our free tutorial, Transitional Moments, to improve your sales promotion strategies and get more at-bats with right-fit prospects.

 

Sales Promotion Strategies: Strategic Insights for Audience Growth, Lead Nurturing, and Sales Enhancement

 

So there is a lot that we’re going to cover in today’s solo cast, as well as next week’s solo cast. Why? Because we, Eric and I, and my business partner here at Predictive, are trying to do everything we possibly can in order to provide the right teaching, the right lessons, the right models, the right frameworks, all of it in full transparency during the fourth quarter to put you in the absolute right position to be able to roar into 2022. So, if you’re watching the video right now, you just saw me put a lion on the screen because that’s what we want for you. We want you to be able to step into this new year in a way that you’ve never been able to step into a new year before. 

 

Sure. You know, as we wind down the fourth quarter of one year, we start thinking kind of emotionally or aspirationally, or we start thinking ambitiously or whatever word you want to insert there. As we think about the next year that’s coming up, January 1st represents New Year’s resolutions and a clean slate and all those types of things, both personally, professionally, and whatnot, so set all of that aside. Let’s think about how we can get super intentional about growing our audience, nurturing leads, and increasing sales in the right way. As we step into 2022 and here at predictive ROI, we believe that most agency owners, business coaches, and strategic consultants go about sales in the least effective, most painful way possible. 

 

And we believe there’s a better way. We call that the Sell with Authority methodology, and we’ve built many different models around that, as well as systems and processes. And we teach inside ASM, our authority sales machine, or during our free weekly Q and A’s or in sessions like right-fit clients, which, if you’re listening to this on the 17th, November 17th right-fit clients is going on right now, maybe. So that’s a three-and-a-half-hour intensive. That’s a private invitation only, but free that we teach a couple of times a year and really do a deep dive and share all those strategies and full transparency. That’s what we want for you in 2022 so that you can feel like you’re stepping into this new year. 

 

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Sales Promotion Strategies: Reflections on Six Years of Growth and Opportunity

 

It’s such a prepared way that you never have experienced before. So that’s why we’re doubling down on the teaching. Okay. So what’s the other reason why today is a solo cast and or today’s episode, excuse me, as a solo cast in next week’s episode is a solo cast? Okay. This might come as a surprise because so Onward Nation has been a podcast now in this amazing audience for the last six years, in that will continue, just not with new episodes. So here’s what I mean. It’s amazing. I’m going to try not to get emotional here, which next week’s episode is going to represent. 

 

The episode will be episode 1031. Amazing. Why, because we’ve built this really incredible community of business owners, just like you, spread out across the globe in nearly 150 countries, what a tremendous blessing that has been. And we’ve been able to work in the trenches alongside business owners in our incredible guests for the last six years. And that has been awesome. And there’s also a business side to it too. Onward Nation, as our cornerstone content, has been a phenomenal business development for predictive. 

 

It didn’t start out that way. That was not our strategy in many of the stories of how we launched or how I decided that we were going to launch an Onward Nation back in May of 2015. Eventually, we got our legs under us, and it became a vital part of our business development. But through that process, through the last six years, it has dramatically changed our business and opened up so many opportunities. And I don’t mean sales-wise, but opportunities for Eric, me, and other members of our team to be able to look at our business and see how it was changing and shaping, morphine, and evolving and really niching down further. 

 

It became amazing then, and Drew McLellan, the CEO of Agency Management Institute. He and I wrote the book Sell with Authority a couple of years ago, which was a tremendous experience and really gave Eric and me the insight of, wait a minute, we can, we can double down even further on the Sell with Authority methodology, apply it to our business and teach it at an even deeper level. And you’ve heard me do that in Onward Nation episodes. So here’s what we’re going to do on November 24th. So, a week from today is going to be our last Onward Nation episode. Rest assured, coming to that decision was not an easy one, and it is something that we have talked about behind the curtain for many months now here at Predictive. 

 

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Sales Promotion Strategies: The Evolution of Onward Nation and the Launch of the Sell with Authority Podcast

 

But candidly, I just wasn’t ready because I felt like I felt like I was saying goodbye in actuality. I’m not. So I’ll tell you the plan here in just a second, or I’ll share the plan here in just a second. It was really, really hard to think about Onward Nation as a show, a community, this opportunity, and this conversation that you and I get to have on a weekly basis. And we’ve been doing that now for six years. It was hard to think, gosh, I won’t do that anymore. But then I quickly got past that when I realized, no, wait a minute, actually, no, that’s not the case. If we’re going to have our last episode air of Onward Nation episode 1031 on November 24th, well, what’s next? 

 

And then I got super excited realizing, well, there’s a lot of cool things. That’s next. In fact, the Sell with Authority podcast is going to launch on Wednesday, January 5th. So what that’s going to do is give us an even greater opportunity to take this conversation around authority and take that even deeper as predictive ROI runs down the path of becoming the authority on what it takes to become the authority. So, we’re doubling down on Wednesday, January 5th, 2022, in our commitment to help you roar into 2022. We’re, oh gosh. 

 

How do I want to say that? Because we’re not sunsetting Onward Nation. I will return to that in just a second because there’s a really cool strategy around that, too. We’re starting the Onward Nation podcast on January 5th as a way to really take us further down this strategy. Okay. So, I stumbled over that last piece about Onward Nation. Let me be more specific there. So, if you go back to the episode where I interviewed Sandy Martini within the last couple of months, it was amazing. and she talked about different learning paths and opportunities of ways to categorize the ways to create special guides and knit together, Onward Nation episodes. 

 

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Sales Promotion Strategies: Creating Learning Paths and Launching the Sell with Authority Podcast

 

And I walked out of that conversation thinking, oh, my word, that was incredible as a way to essentially create learning paths because, with a thousand plus episodes, it can be overwhelming to where to start. Our guests are so amazing, and Onward Nation guests are so amazing and sharing great insights, but where do you start? Who do you choose first? Sandy had some great recommendations for creating learning paths within Onward Nation. So that’s exactly what we’re going to do. Onward Nation is a gold mine of incredible smarts from these super generous guests we’ve had on our show for the last six years. 

 

But what we’ve not done is we’ve not grouped and categorized and created guides and learning paths of the best place to start. Let’s say that you are most interested in growing your audience or increasing sales. So now what we’re going to do is we’re going to take all of those episodes, put them in grow, nurture, sell categories, and we’re going to create special guides and learning paths so that the Onward Nation episodes are even that much more helpful. So rest assured, the Onward Nation episodes are going nowhere. They are staying on predictive roi.com, and we’re doubling down on how to make that content even more helpful to you. 

 

And we’re launching the Sell with Authority podcast on Wednesday, January 5th, along with a brand new website. Why? Because, Hey, if we’re going to push the big Boulder up the hill, we might as well make it as big as possible. Okay. So those are a couple of really exciting and emotional things to share with you before we dive into today’s episode. So, one last thing, and I shouldn’t say one last thing because it makes it sound like it’s not important or incredibly important. And that is very sincere, thank you. There’s absolutely no way that I could be having this conversation with you right now. 

 

If the last six years had not been this amazing, incredible, awesome experience, it would be such a gift to be able to press record and to be able to have this conversation with you and to try to be helpful and to share insights and expertise that we’ve collected from our various guests or things experiments we’ve taken out of the predictive ROI lab that we’re sharing with you now, or in our Q and A’s or however, we have this opportunity to walk alongside you. It is not lost on me that, of course, you have an infinite number of ways to invest your time. 

 

Learn more about sales promotion strategies by tuning in to: The SIPHON Framework.

 

Sales Promotion Strategies: Gratitude and Excitement

 

We all have the same 86,400 seconds in a day. I’m incredibly grateful that you have chosen to invest some of your time, your precious time today, with me right now; whether this is your first episode of Onward Nation or if it’s your 700th episode of Onward Nation, please know I’m extremely grateful for the time that you and I have had to spend together. And I’m super excited for the time that we’re going to get to spend together on the Sell with Authority podcast in how the experts, the special guest experts. 

 

Sales promotion strategies:

I’d like to give you the list of people who are going to join us at that show. We’re going to be incredibly helpful and super generous and help you again with this goal of roaring into 2022. Amazing. My first guest, as you might have guessed, is going to be Drew McLellan. My co-author in the book Sell with Authority and amazingly, and we’ll, hopefully, this is going to fit well into his schedule, but every couple of months, Drew is going to come back and be my guest on the show, which will be a whole heck of a lot of fun. Okay. That’s what I wanted to share with you in the introduction. 

 

And I know that that was probably a little bit longer. It was a little bit longer than what I had attended. Now, let’s move to the three key pieces I wanted to share with you during this solo cast. And they actually sync up well with what Eric and I are teaching today. In fact, at right-fit clients, or RFC 2.0, we’re calling it 2.0 because the first time that we taught RIFA clients was back on June 24th, 2021. And it was awesome. It was so great. It was just a ton of fun and a great turnout. Yes. I think the content was helpful, but just engaging in the questions and all of that from everybody who was in the room virtually, of course, was amazing. 

 

It was so much fun. So, as we were thinking about how we could be helpful in the fourth quarter, naturally, we thought, oh, well, we certainly need to have right for clients, but let’s do RIFA clients 2.0, let’s raise the bar of awesomeness in. And I think that we did that. So really excited to give you a few of those highlights of what we’re covering today. So, first, let’s take a quick look. Now, obviously, if you’re listening, this is one of those encouraging moments of going to the video in the show notes today. And so what we’re taking a look at here right now is even if you’re listening, I’ll do my best to narrate this kind of. 

 

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Sales Promotion Strategies: The Three Pillars of Authority Sales

 

Sales promotion strategies:

There are three key strategies, pillars, if you will, that we focus on inside the authority sales machine, and we call that we call them to grow the audience, nurture leads, and then increase sales. Okay. So, if you’re watching this on video, you see those three on your screen. So, I will highlight them now, grow the audience, nurture leads, and increase sales. And if you’ve seen our model before, if you’re not watching on video and you’re listening right now, if you’ve seen this kind of a Venn diagram, essentially before then and at the center of the Venn diagram, we place return on investment. And we placed that there because that’s our promise. 

 

That is our promise to you as a member of our community. If you give us this opportunity to teach and share, to teach around, grow, nurture, and sell, the ROI comes when you take an application. When you apply the strategies that we teach with excellence, you see then return on investment. Okay. So, let’s transition into the three key pieces we taught today at RFC and how they intersect with the grow nurture sale. Okay. So the first one, which is the first strategy that we taught today, is what we’re calling The Infinity Loop. 

 

I’ll break that down here in just a second, but I also want to connect it to where it connects here on the diagram. First, let me give some credit where credit is due. So, a few minutes ago, I mentioned Sandy Martini, our guest on Onward Nation, a couple of months ago. It really just blew me away with her generosity and sharing smarts. And with you, Onward Nation, it was super awesome. Okay. So then, after that conversation with Sandy, maybe it was like, right before that conversation, I don’t remember exactly the timeline, but either before or after the interview, she decided to join ASM. 

 

So she stepped into the authority sales machine as a member. And I think maybe it was a month or two, maybe a couple of months. Then she raised her hand and said, Hey, tell me a little bit more about this 90-day sprint thing that you’ve got going on. And so we did. Then, she decided to join our 90-day sprint program. Awesome. And so she has become a very, very active member of our community. Amazing. So you may have seen her or met her at one of our weekly Q and A or a specialized training if you happen to be an ASM member as well. Okay. So here’s the point. So you’re predictive through the 90-day sprint process in that 90-day process run by Eric, my business partner. 

 

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Sales Promotion Strategies: The Impact of Collaborative Innovation

 

He said to me, he said, holy buckets, as I learned more and more about Sandy, I think that her business could really be helpful to us. I’m like, oh wow. He said he thought she could help us take ASM to the next level. You know, she is a retention expert. As you may have heard her describe in our Onward Nation interview, she is a membership program expert. I’m like, well, that sounds amazing, Eric. So let’s chat with her about that. And so we started chatting with her about it, and then sure enough, we actually engaged her for a 12-month program where she is now helping us; she and her team are helping us take ASM to a brand new level. 

 

Sales promotion strategies? Okay. So, set that aside for a second. So, during a strategy session every Friday at 10 o’clock central, we get together for a strategy session. During that conversation, we’re talking about when somebody guests on an episode, we’re thinking about a kind of client, but then also thinking about how we could apply this for predictive. So let’s say that Stephen and Eric, maybe we guest on a podcast, and then, and then, Hey, we could create that episode or transform that episode, of course, into a blog post. But what if the topic of that episode was aligned with a golden nugget out of training in the authority sales machine all now? That’s interesting. 

 

So, we do an interview around that topic, and then the interview becomes a blog post. We insert the CTA if you’re already an ASM member and you want that full training; go here so they can log into the platform and get that the reader of the blog posts, or if someone’s not yet an ASM member, we show them how to become one. And then, of course, they’re screaming cool value exchange and the new lead sequence, which I will map out here in just a second. So when the three of us go back and forth on that, I’m like, holy bananas, that creates a really cool loop. And then we started calling it The Infinity Loop, which is amazing. So now it’s become this thing. So, we had to be onsite with one of our clients and had a break in order to do this strategy call. Then, we hung up and just happened to be debriefing with our client at the time. 

 

It mentioned that he’s like, that’s really cool. Could you do that for us? And then started having other conversations. Pretty soon, The Infinity Loop was outside the predictive ROI lab, and we’re taking it and applying it. So, I want to share it here with you right now in full transparency, right? So that if you and your team wanted to do it, you could do it. So that’s one of the things we’re going to cover. We’re also going to chat a little bit during this episode about Transitional Moments and how important they are for your audience. And then a bit about the power of three when asking questions with your prospects so that you can start sales conversations like a pro. All right. So that’s what we’re going to cover. Okay. 

 

Learn more about sales promotion strategies by tuning in to: The SIPHON Framework.

 

Sales Promotion Strategies: Strategies for Authority Building and Audience Growth

 

Thank you for hanging with me. We’re 20 minutes in, and I would really appreciate it if you’re still here listening. Thank you. Because I know that that was 20 minutes of introduction and setting the stage and all of that. So, thank you for your patience. Okay. So, let’s go back to the video, and I will do my best to narrate it in the upper left-hand corner next to the grow nurture cell model. I’ve written the words infinity loop. So where does infinity loop help, and where does it plug into the model it plugs into, at least initially, we think of plugs into a plant, the flag, meaning or plant your flag, meaning that there are three essentials to planting your flag of authority, niche, point of view, and creating cornerstone content on a consistent basis. 

 

Sales promotion strategies: The Infinity Loop absolutely runs best or works best when it is a niche and is not broad or wetlands within your niche and not broad, is what I meant to say. And it’s all about creating content on a consistent basis. So, as you can see, it is going to hook into cornerstone content as well. Also on the right-hand side are the words that apply the accelerant part of the growing audience strategy. One of those strategies or accelerants is search engine optimization or SEO. So you can see The Infinity Loop kind of hooks into a number of different aspects within grow audience. 

 

And I think you could also argue that the infinity loop is part of a transitional moment, and the infinity loop definitely hooks into something to sell. Okay. So the Transitional Moments are part of the nurture leads, pillar strategy or core strategy and increased sales; the something to sell the value ladder is part of the third pillar strategy that we focus on here at predictive. So again, grow audience, nurture leads, and increase sales; infinity loop plugs into a whole bunch of those, which is amazing. So now let’s take and break down how this actually works so that if you and your team want to take it and apply it, I’ve given you a good framework that you can do. 

 

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Sales Promotion Strategies: Building Thought Leadership

 

Okay. So now let’s go actually to look at the loop itself, and then we’ll talk about how this actually works. I just realized I have a very squeaky chair. I need to put some WD 40 on my chair. So, hopefully, that wasn’t too loud. Okay. So right now, if you’re watching this on video, you obviously see the loop. If you’re listening to it again, I’ll do my best to describe it audibly as we move around the loop. So, in the upper, the loop is an orange loop. It’s horizontal; I’m just describing that on the screen now. And the upper left-hand sort of corner of the screen, not the corner of the loop, obviously, cause it’s got rounded edges, there’s a little checklist icon. 

 

What that represents is making a list of 30 to 50 topics like topics where you have a depth of expertise, a list of topics where you could teach at depth, and share golden nuggets that are really helpful for the audience who are listening to you, teach on that topic. For example, an infinity loop would be a great topic, but it also is kind of a high-level strategic topic, right? So, I would take this portion about why it’s important to create 30 to 50 topics as part of your thought leadership program to be able to teach at a granular level. 

 

Could I turn that into a topic and maybe do a 30, 40, 50 minute podcast interview, like on somebody else’s show? Absolutely. Could we do that as a solo cast on the Sell with Authority podcast coming up in January? Absolutely. So, there’s some depth to your knowledge and expertise around these topic areas. Okay. That’s the first piece, the next piece, let’s assume. In fact, let me back up for just a second, and I will switch this slide and go backward. Cause I just remembered something and see, this is so new that we don’t really have sort of the teaching principles down yet. So I’m going to go backward here and now what we’re looking at again, if you’re listening and not watching now, what we’re looking at is essentially call it your value ladder more of a kind of a traditional view, as well as some additional stages that we’ve built in.

 

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Sales Promotion Strategies: The Value Ladder Approach to Predictable Business Growth

 

But essentially, let’s call this a value ladder. We call this the authority business model, but I will leave that description for a different time. Right now, we’re going to focus on the latter piece, the latter piece, and that latter piece, the ladder piece. Okay. Here’s the issue that typically is experienced, let’s say, on the lower rung of the value ladder. So let’s say that you have a course or maybe a membership program or whatever the demand or the revenue cycle of those tends to be like peaks and valleys. So again, if you’re listening, just sort of imagine a wavy line with peaks and valleys, and at the peak and each of these peaks, maybe you did some sort of special event, right? 

 

Maybe it was a webinar, or maybe it was some sort of online workshop, or maybe it was an in-person workshop or in-person event or something. There was some sort of event that you put into place, and you had maybe some prospects in the room, and afterward, they’re like, yep, I totally want to participate in that. Okay. Awesome. What’s interesting, though, is that you get on the other side of that, and it declines. So whether that’s member attrition or the growth is just stagnant, whatever, but you’re looking for the next sort of peak right in, it’s lumpy at best. Is there a way to smooth that out? 

 

Nice, consistent, predictable growth. Yes. And that’s where The Infinity Loop fits in really nicely. So, instead of being lumpy like this, instead, it’ll be nice and consistent with a straight lineup, and that would add some stability to the business. Okay. So now, let’s go back to the infinity loop here. So again the upper left, we’re talking about the 30 to 50 topics. So those 30 to 50 topics and this is what kind of jogged my memory and why we had to go backward. Those need to sync in with, let’s call it, your course. Maybe you have an academy, or maybe it’s a membership program like we have here, predictive of the ASM, which is our membership program. 

 

So those 30 to 50 topics need to sync in with the golden nuggets out of, or within, your course, your academy, and your membership program. Right? So again, remember the blog post is going to teach whatever that topic is. At some depth, these are not vanilla blog posts. This is in-depth teaching. And then the CTA is going to be, if you’re a member of ASM, click here and get the full training module inside, blah, blah, blah. Right? And then, if somebody who’s not an ASM member, they’ll have the opportunity to learn more about becoming an ASM member. So remove ASM, insert your program, insert your course, insert your academy is a way to take blog posts and then connect them into the module or training where they can go a little bit deeper, a lot deeper into that golden nugget. 

 

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 Sales Promotion Strategies: The Power of Podcasts in Your Marketing Strategy

 

Infinity loop as one of the sales promotion strategies — Okay. We’re into that topic. All right. So now let’s go around counter-clockwise here on the loop, and we’re going to go around the loop here and make our first turn. That’s a really wavy line, and we’re going to look at podcasts now. and so whether you want to be a guest on podcasts, you want to guest contribute blog posts. You want to do video interviews, speak at particular events, or do whatever. That’s fine. So don’t get hung up on that. I have podcasts listed here. This can be absolute, or this absolutely can be a channel-agnostic strategy, depending on your preference. 

 

Okay. Obviously, I needed to include an icon for the illustration. So, I chose a podcast. So you’re going to guest four to six times on a monthly basis. That gives you an opportunity to practice what we call a predictive siphoning strategy. And there are several different elements that are super important about siphoning. And we have actually made this one of our eight fast strategies inside ASM. So, if you are listening, excuse me. If you’re listening or watching now and are an ASM member, that’s what I meant to say. Please check out Fast Eight, a series of strategies inside ASM and Siphon, among others. 

 

Audiences are what is called. It’s actually eight inside. The fast state is very detailed training inside ASM. Okay. So Siphon is really important when you’re standing in front of we’re stepping in front of the right audience, teaching the right thing at the right time, you’re going to be then creating some rapport and chemistry and all of that. Amazing. So you also want to be able to step into that audience and say, listen. If you’d like to learn more about X, Y, and Z, we created a free guide. You can go to predictiveroi.com/whatever or your website.com/whatever to download the free guide, where we go even deeper into topics one, two, and three or X, Y, and Z. 

 

Learn more about sales promotion strategies by tuning in to: The SIPHON Framework.

 

Sales Promotion Strategies: Leveraging Blogs for Continuous Learning

 

Okay. No sales pitch here. You’re just giving them a free guide to where they can continue their learning. Amazing. So when that happens, I’m going to call this, I’m going to write in here, Siphon inside the loop, and then because a certain percentage of that audience is going to download the screaming cool value exchange. Amazing. So now, a percentage of that audience becomes your audience. Okay? So what’s next? After you siphon, after you share your insights and wisdom, you have the ability to siphon. They opt-in and download your screaming cool value exchange, which is also a training inside the fast state; by the way, they continue to move around the loop in drop into what is called the new lead sequence. 

 

Now, that does not mean it’s this newfangled high-pressure sales pitch thing or this really miraculous that once somebody receives email number two, then all of a sudden they’re all in, and they want to spend lots of money with you and your team. No, that’s not the new lead sequence at all. It is a six-part email series spread over 12 days that continues the learning in a super generous way. Okay. And what it does on email number six. Yes, it does say, listen. You should check out if we can help you solve this problem. Okay. That is going to give you an opportunity to sell more courses, academies, membership programs, whatever. 

 

I’ll come back to that in just a minute. So now they’re going to continue around. Let me make that a little bit better. Let’s continue around the loop further. And now that takes us to the blog component, and this is where we’re going to take the episodes where you are a guest, or you’re going to take the episodes where you are a guest and get them transcribed. The typical 30 to 45-minute kind of episode. It is generally about five to 6,000 words, and it is an awesome blog, really rocking Rakim. Post Google-friendly blog posts should be around 500 to a thousand words. 

 

Let’s say you write a thousand words on a particular topic. Remember, this topic is tied back to golden nuggets from a particular lesson in your academy. This blog post is going to be helpful. Even if somebody just read the blog, the post is going to be super helpful. They can take and apply some strategies out of the blog post. So then the blog post is a thousand about a thousand words, 500 to a thousand words is Google friendly, anything more than a thousand words? It has to be so amazingly awesome in order to hold the audience. If it’s less than 500 words, it doesn’t really give you enough word count for meat and potatoes in order to optimize that for search. 

 

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Sales Promotion Strategies: The Value Ladder Approach

 

We’re going to optimize where you will optimize this blog post for search. Why? This gives you the ability to attract very targeted traffic to your website by consuming the blog content. They can go from the blog to link to the full episode and listen to the full whatever, but a thousand words are going to be super helpful. And Hey, if you’re an ASM member go here, and this is a full training on the fast state or the full training on the new lead sequence, for example, or how to create your screaming, cool value exchange, whatever. Then, they can consume that training if they’re a member of your academy or program. 

 

And then, if they’re not a member, they are; they go to the sales page. It sounds so crass to say sales page. They go to the page where they can learn more about the benefits of joining your particular program. Okay. Then, that moves people back into the center of the loop, where you’re creating consistent revenue for your program. Why? Because organic traffic it’s always happening, right? People are searching on a daily basis. And so when you’re doing this at scale across a number of interviews, let’s say you do five interviews a month, and you do that for an entire year. 

 

That is 60 blog posts that follow this recipe on a yearly basis. And let’s say you do it for three years. Now, you have almost 200 blog posts that are aligned with your smarts that are optimized for search. Then you start to see this nice steady increase in the course, academy program membership, whatever sales, okay, shouldn’t you still do those quarterly events or by annual events, or like whatever, in order to spike the number of people in your community and course participants. Sure, absolutely. This doesn’t replace the strategy; it augments that strategy. 

 

Okay. So, I hope that you found that overview of The Infinity Loop to be helpful. All right. So now let’s go back to. We’re taking it again if you’re on video, you see this, and if you’re just listening, sorry, that sounds really bad. If you’re listening to just the audio version, we’re taking a look at the value ladder here. So the ascending staircase, if you will, and in each one of these stages at each one of the steps or rungs on the ladder steps in the staircase, rungs on the ladder, whatever visual metaphor you want to use, each one of those rungs represents, or steps represents an opportunity to do we’re to offer what we call Transitional Moments. 

 

Learn more about sales promotion strategies by tuning in to: The SIPHON Framework.

 

Sales Promotion Strategies: Building Trust through Transitional Moments

 

Okay. So what are Transitional Moments? Let’s think about it this way. So when you and your significant other went out on your first date, I guess you had a great time, and afterward, you told that person, I had a great time, and maybe you asked that person, did you have a great time? And maybe they said, yeah, I had a great time too, oh, awesome. I had a great time. You had a great time. Yeah. I had a great time. So you both had a great time. I guess you probably didn’t then say, Hey if you’re not doing anything next Saturday, how about we get married? Now, has that happened to some people like those sort of lucky strike extras, where they meet somebody as love at first sight, after the first date they knew? 

 

And then a couple of weeks later, they got married; they’d been married for 60 years. Has that happened? Sure. The reason why those stories really stand out is because they are not typical. It’s not normal. That doesn’t actually happen very often. And so when it does, we’re like, wow, how amazing is that? Right? What is more typical is you have a first date, then you have a second date. Then you have a third day, meet their friends, and then they meet your friends. And then maybe a family member, maybe a cousin, then there’s the meeting of the parents. And then maybe it’s a shared holiday. You know? So there’s all of these types of things that happen along the way in social circumstances typically, right? 

 

And in all of those different things, the holiday, whatever those are, Transitional Moments, Transitional Moments are opportunities to develop greater trust in order to make that process. That relationship does not feel yucky, right? You don’t want to, you do not like, you don’t like when this happens to you when you walk into a store or you opt-in for a thing or you want to download or whatever, and then all of a sudden you get some sort of call or an email, and somebody pounces on you that feels yucky. That feels terrible. So, let’s not do that in our own sales process and our own business development process. 

 

Learn more about sales promotion strategies by tuning in to: The SIPHON Framework.

 

Sales Promotion Strategies: The Power of Transitional Moments

 

Let’s respect the laws of nature. If you will, and realize that we need to create a series of Transitional Moments that go deeper and deeper and deeper, the farther up we’re asking somebody to move in our value ladder. It is just that fact that is the case. That is a law of nature. That’s just the way we are as people. But we often don’t have the intentionality around a Transitional Moment, and it just haphazardly happens or, worse yet, doesn’t happen. And then we can’t figure out why. So I was speaking at a conference a couple of months ago. One of the attendees in the room said, Stephen, I am so frustrated because, you know, every time we share great content on a weekly or monthly basis, whatever it is, we see the same people over and over and over and over and over again, clicking on the stuff, downloading things, whatever. 

 

And they never asked for a strategy call or a free consultation. And I’m like, you know why that is? And no, I’m frustrated. Why is that? You might not like this answer either because it might be happening to you. The reason why that happens is because they don’t trust you yet. They don’t trust you enough to raise their hand and say, Hey, can we sit down for that free consultation? They think it’s going to be a sales pitch. Now, it may not be, it may not be that at all, but there’s not enough trust yet in the relationship between you and them that says that it’s going to be okay. 

 

And they don’t know yet how you can be helpful in solving their business issue or challenge. And so what happens is they continue to consume your content, and they might do that for a day or a decade. Eventually, they may raise their hand if you’ve been intentional enough with Transitional Moments to help them see that. Let’s go back to the diagram here for just a second. Each of these Transitional Moments could be a course, and those are probably free. These could be free events. For example, we just taught a right-fit client in full transparency, full-on teaching for three and a half hours. And you know, there’s probably going to be people who, because I’m recording this before we’ve taught it, may raise their hand and say, Hey, could you tell me more about becoming an ASM member? 

 

Yay, awesome. It’s not a three-and-a-half-hour pitch Fest that would be gross and feel really yucky to all the people who are coming. We would never do that. And so it might be free events. Maybe it’s going to be like a live event that you host, maybe like in a trade show or something like that. Maybe you sponsor a cocktail party or something like that. It could be something as simple as it could be a webinar. So, I think you get the point, right? There are a number of different things that you can be doing that will help you teach at a deeper level and help you take that relationship and trust at a deeper level or to a deeper level so that you create these opportunities for somebody to raise their hand and say, Hey, could you tell me more about that thing, right? 

 

Learn more about sales promotion strategies by tuning in to: The SIPHON Framework.

 

Sales Promotion Strategies: The Power of the 180-Degree Turn

 

In a non-schmaltzy way, you never, ever, ever want your prospects to feel like they were prospects by creating the right amount of infinity loop content mixed in with Transitional Moments. That’s a fantastic thing, right? And that’s such a really, really cool opportunity to help somebody feel comfortable by stepping into a relationship with you. Okay. So now what I want to share with you is the third and final piece before we wrap up; you’ll see on the screen the 180 degrees, and this is a sales technique that I learned about 30 years ago when reading the book Guerrilla, Sally and I have practiced it like militantly. 

 

That’s the right word: discipline with great discipline over the last 30 years, 30 plus years. It’s called the about-face and the about-face harnesses, the power of three, which is something we taught at a right-fit client this morning or on the 17th, I’m recording this a week before. and so it takes a conversation. It moves it in the exact opposite direction and then goes down the path of helping your prospect actually answer their own objections by answering your questions. And it really helps you navigate the sales conversation like a pro. 

 

Okay. So here’s what ends up happening when we don’t do something like this: maybe you might be inexperienced at sales, or maybe somebody on your team who’s in charge of sales and biz-dev actually is experienced or creates all sorts of excuses around why they’re not being successful. When they’re in front of prospects, here’s the reality: inexperienced salespeople or people who are nervous about it. They do all the talking because they’re uncomfortable with silence. They do all of the talking, and it shows, it shows the prospect that they’re inexperienced, whereas the reverse of that great salespeople are quiet, great salespeople ask great questions, and then they’re quiet and they let their prospects do all of the talking. 

 

Learn more about sales promotion strategies by tuning in to: The SIPHON Framework.

 

Sales Promotion Strategies: Mastering Sales Conversations

 

So, the about-face technique reverses that, keeps you quiet, and keeps your prospects talking so that you can help them solve their business issues and challenges. We do that through, by asking really smart questions about their business issue and challenges. And we do that by harnessing the power of three. And so here’s what I mean by that really quickly. And then we’re going to start to wrap up here because this is turning into a longer episode than I originally intended. So, the power of three is asking the same question three different times in three slightly different varieties in order to peel back the layers of a prospect’s true intent. 

 

And that’s not being rude; it’s actually helpful when you knit that together. Someone says, Hey, Stephen, I really want to plant my flag of authority in my particular niche. Tell me how you guys do that. Now, that sounds like an open invitation for me to say we do that with three different service levels. We actually have a value ladder here with three distinct stages. It starts with ASM. It moves then to a 90-day sprint. And then, we have our turnkey level of service there, depending upon what degree of help you and your team want. Blah-blah-blah, somebody might think that was the invitation to step into a sales pitch or deliver the sales pitch. And it’s not good for the inexperienced salesperson. 

 

It sounds like it is, but it isn’t. You should do the about-face in that scenario and then peel the onion. So the person just told you they want to plant their flag and authority in the niche. So then the about-face might be awesome. I’d love to share that with you. Tell me more about why you want to plant your flag of authority in your niche. Now, what I’ve done is I’ve gone completely 180 degrees in the opposite direction, not in a rude way, not in an invasive way. I look forward to sharing the details about ASM, sprint, and turnkey. Awesome. But the immediate answer is that taking somebody into our turnkey level of service is completely inappropriate because now they’ll feel like a prospect. However, reversing this 180 degrees in the opposite direction is about facing something so easily to do so subtly.

 

Learn more about sales promotion strategies by tuning in to: The SIPHON Framework.

 

Sales Promotion Strategies: The Power of Three and the About-Face Technique

 

Now the prospect says, oh, okay, well, so let me tell you more about that. All right. So, and then they go on to say and share more contexts, maybe it’s 2, 3, 4, 5 minutes, right? And then you use the power of three by saying, okay, that sounds fascinating. Why is that important to you and your business? Now, what I’m doing is using the power of three. And so now that person has an opportunity to go a little bit deeper. And then when they do, you can say, okay, I think I’m tracking with you because you said X, then you said Y, but why are X and Y together? Like, why do you think that’s going to be important? And now, holy, but again, it’s you just asking the person, your prospect, in a very polite way to take their strategy deeper. 

 

And I can almost assuredly guarantee you that whatever the third answer is, it is their motivation for making this decision. Now, once you have that third answer, you can now better say great, okay, that, that makes a total, or that makes a lot of sense. Based on what you shared with me, I actually think our 90-day sprint program might be a decent fit. Can I share some details about that? And, of course, they’re going to say, yeah, that’s great. That’s awesome. Please do. And now you have a bunch of context that you can knit together into the middle rung of your value ladder and share with them how your version of a 90-day sprint per se, could be really helpful to them in accomplishing their goals. 

 

Right. And then, at the end, the person will say, yeah, that sounds awesome. Or yeah. Or, or no, you’re off the mark there. Well, great. Let me tell you about ASM and see if that’s a decent fit or awesome. You need some additional support. Let me share our turnkey level of service with you if that is a good fit. So, it gives you much flexibility to move up and down your ladder by harnessing the power of three and the about-face. Okay. So, that’s what I wanted to share with you during this episode. That was helpful. I am super excited for next week’s episode as well. 

 

So, on November 24th, which will be the final episode of Onward Nation, the final new episode of Onward Nation is not going anywhere. We’re going to recategorize it and create these learning paths that I mentioned. It’s going to be unique and really harness the potential or harness all of the harvest harnesses. I don’t know; all of the golden nuggets out of a thousand-plus episodes are going to be so cool as part of our commitment to helping you roar into a roar through 2022. We’re going to launch the Sell with Authority podcast on Wednesday, January 5th. I hope that you found this conversation helpful. 

 

I greatly appreciate all the time we have spent together over the last six years. I look forward to continuing that in the Sell with Authority podcast, and I wish you great success in the week ahead and Onward with Gusto. 

 

This episode is complete. So head to OnwardNation.com for show notes and more food to fuel your ambition. Continue to find your recipe for success here at Onward Nation.