Personal Life Media

Transcript

Susan Bratton: Welcome to DishyMix. I’m your host, Susan Bratton, and on today’s show you’re going to get to meet Dave VanHoose. Dave is a co-founder of a company called Seven Figure Speaking Empire. You can find him at speakingempire.com, and they call him The Closer. Dave has written over a hundred presentations generating over a $100 million in sales in the last year alone. He’s busy. And he came on the show today to share with us something that I think you’re going to be very interested in: the five core components of an automated webinar that sells. So we’re talking about workhorse digital marketing here. We’re talking about how you can set up a webinar that lives on in the ether of the Internet, that people can come to, consume either in a timed base or an ad hoc way, and it takes them through an information content process that also allows you to sell them a product or service.

So I really want to welcome Dave onto the show. I had an opportunity to meet him out in Phoenix Arizona at a conference recently, and he’s a lovely amazing fun super pumped up motivated guy. You might know him actually from a well acclaimed series he did call The Get Motivated Mega Seminars. If that gives you any indication of what you’re in for, he was setting the stage with Zig Ziglar and Lou Holts and Mayor Giuliani and General Colin Powell. And so I think you’re going to have a lot of fun, and lets talk about making money with automated webinars. Welcome Dave VanHoose.

Dave VanHoose: Hey, I’m so excited to be on the call with you tonight Susan, and I’ve got so much great information. I just want it to all come out so I can build so much value for you and your clients tonight.

Susan Bratton: Thank you. Well what I really want to do is I want to talk about a couple of things. I want to get to the core of the five core components of an automated webinar that sells, but before that what I want you to do is also – or it doesn’t even, you can do this in any order you want Dave – I want to talk about the actual kind of structured communication that leads up to a good automated webinar, what it’s like to have the five core components and how they work and why they’re like they are, and then any other things that you can tell me about, you know, conversion rates and registrations and closing after the webinar and other things like that wherever you have to add that, so that we take people through essentially the entire arc of an automated webinar marketing strategy. So where do you want to start? Do you want to start right in the gooey creamy center with the five core components, or do you want to do the kind of lead up piece?

Dave VanHoose: Well what I’d like to do real quickly is just kind of tell people a little bit about my history so that they understand where this information is coming from.

Susan Bratton: Perfect.

Dave VanHoose: So what I’m about to share today isn’t something I’ve read in a book. This is something I’ve experience. I had a great opportunity over the last decade when I first started by info marketer business and speaking business, that I had the great opportunity – of course I wanted to be like the rest of the speakers, and so I started speaking a lot from stage. And Susan I had the great opportunity to speak twice a day from stage five days a week. And the only reason I only got to speak five days a week, ‘cause after the fifth day I lost my voice. And so, you know, I was gargling salt water, just whatever, but the great thing is I got to figure out what closes from a webinar or from a platform. So I got to test each thing, you know, and you know -- when do you pick up the water? How do you anchor down the table? How do you use trial closes? And so I got to test this over and over again to figure out a mathematical formula that anybody can use to close from an automated webinar or even from a stage presentation, and I want to share that with you and your folks tonight.

Susan Bratton: All right, that sounds good. Where do you want to start?

Dave VanHoose: Okay, great. What I want to start with, I want to start with the presentation because at the end of the day the presentation, the converting presentation is the most important component.

Susan Bratton: It’s the workhorse. It’s the thing that gets…

Dave VanHoose: It’s the workhorse.

Susan Bratton: the credit cards out of the wallets.

Dave VanHoose: Absolutely. And so I’ve got a lot of training in this and I’ve studied NLP, hypnosis and I’ve studied a lot of sales training in this process, and what I want to share with you is my mathematical presentation blueprint. This is a blueprint that you’ll be able to use as soon as you have your webinar or your stage presentation. I’m going to share with you and break it down piece by piece for each and every one of you so that you can follow this formula. Because it’s kind of like this Susan: what happens is maybe somebody gets really good at buying and selling real estate or becomes really good at nutrition or whatever. And then somebody might say, “Hey, would you come to my seminar and speak?” And what usually happens is not knowing how to write a presentation or craft a presentation, they then, the night before they got to speak write a presentation. They will then deliver that presentation, do okay and then fast forward.

That’s the same presentation that they written the first thing. They haven’t engineered. They don’t understand how to write a presentation, and so I’ve written a lot of presentations for some of the biggest gurus in the country. All the famous speakers come to me to actually have a script. And one of the things that I want to share is that if you’re closing from the platform or from a webinar, you have to be scripted. And the reason I’m real big on scripting is because you have to have a consistent result. ‘Cause if you’re not scripted you’re going to have varying results, and so when you become scripted you can know the outcome before you get up on stage. Does that make sense?

Susan Bratton: Of course. Yeah, you got to have a plan, and I think everyone who’s listening wants the plan. So I don’t think you have to convince us that we need to be prepared. As a matter of fact, I’d say that in general the DishyMix listener is an extremely prepared very solid, if not excellent, presenter. So start with somebody who already has talent, is comfortable on the stage, understands how to write compelling copy and take us from there, ‘cause I think those are kind of givens for us.

Dave VanHoose: Okay, awesome. So let me just deep din right inside the presentation. So when I write a presentation I want you to understand there’s five components when you write a presentation. So I’m going to go through the process that I do when I write a presentation so that you can model this and so that you can write your own webinars or your own stage presentations. So the very first thing I want you to understand in a presentation is that you’ve got five components to every presentation. You’ve got what they call the intro; you’ve got the story; you’ve got the offer; the body of the presentation; and then the most important, you have the close. Those are the five components.

So I’m going to be breaking down this bit by piece so that everybody on this call can then use this blueprint to get success. So one of the first things that we start when we write a presentation is most people want to start with the very first slide, the PowerPoint slide. But we do something different; we start with the end in mind. And what we’re going to create when we write a presentation is what we call the ‘irresistible offer’, and that’s what you want to start with. What does everybody want? And, you know, I know Susan a majority of your clients know this, people don’t buy what they need, they buy what they want. And it’s so amazing that I work with all these speakers and info marketers, they’re trying to sell people what they need, but no, you want to figure out what people want. And so you want to start with the end in mind and work backwards. So what you want to do is you kind of create the irresistible offer on your summary slide. So that’s the very first slide that you start with.

Now after you’ve created what you’re going to put on the offer, what is some of the hot things that people are looking for is, you know, of course everybody wants something done for you, you know. They’re going to want some handheld. They’re going to want probably a six week webinar series. They’re going to want to come to a three-day boot camp. And so what you’re going to want to do in your offer is you’re going to create what they call a ‘hot button close,’ because Susan we don’t know what everybody wants that you’re offering something. Each person has a hot button as why they buy. And so we don’t know that reason as we’re speakers, so we want to make sure that we draw out each and every hot button thing in our product that will cause a person to buy. Does that make sense?

Susan Bratton: Yeah, and are those essentially the, you know, the five things that, you know, turn your life around and the three things you need to do right away to blah, blah, blah? Is that what you’re talking about? Are those the hot buttons, like the things they don’t know that’ll get them what they want?

Dave VanHoose: Absolutely. And what you want to do is a summary slide, which is the components that they’re going to get of your course or system. You want to draw out all the benefits or all the things that are included on the last slide. And so I just want to kind of give you an example because each and every person that’s buying your product buys it for their reason, not yours. And so you want to draw out all the information that you can or all the things that you could put into your offer so that way you could be doing your offer and somebody could say, “Oh man, I want to come to the three day boot camp” and that’s why they bought. Or it might be that they want the six week in your home webinar series, and that’s why they bought. Or they might want the six week, you know, coaching program. So each different component is a reason why somebody buys, so you want to make sure you draw that out. Does that make sense?

Susan Bratton: It does.

Dave VanHoose: Okay, good.

Susan Bratton: But you don’t start with that, right? You start with your, I got a little confused on starting with the irresistible offer and then doing the hot button close, and where do those go?

Dave VanHoose: Okay, so you want to start with the end in mind, which is the last slide, which is the stack slide, the summary stack slide. You want to make sure you draw out as many things as you can of your course or adding components into your course so that you can make your offer an irresistible offer. Now we know people don’t buy features, they buy benefits. You want to draw as many benefits of your product as possible and list them in the summary slide. So you want to start with that irresistible offer. Now after you got the irresistible offer, I kind of want to just break down the whole formula of the presentation. So let me just kind of start with the intro.

One of the, and the beginning of your presentation is what I call one of the most important things of the presentation, the introduction. Now if you’re doing a webinar or you’re going from stage, the key to the introduction of your presentation is to have the guru or the leader introduce you from the stage. What will usually happen sometimes if you’re doing a webinar or somebody’s list, or if you’re going live and doing some of these events, they might have an MC or somebody introduce you. But that is not the best strategy because if you think about this, lets just say you were speaking on Tony Robbins’s stage; you want to have the guru introduce you because if Tony Robbins introduced you, gave you the credibility and then transferred that power onto you is going to give you more power than having an MC get up there and introduce you. Does that make sense?

Susan Bratton: Of course.

Dave VanHoose: So what I did when I spoke on the Get Motivated stage – I’ll give you a quick little story here – is I was back in the Green Screen and, you know, Mayor Giuliani, Lou Holtz and all these guys were there and it was just so much fun. And they had an MC that was introducing all the speakers, and her name was Cara. And I came up to Cara and I’m like, “Hey Cara, do you think that you could give me a hug?” And she’s like, “Oh yeah, yeah.” I go, “No, not from here, from stage.” Because I knew that she introduced Mayor Giuliani, Lou Holtz and she gave away $10,000, so what happened is subconsciously when I got up on stage and they saw her give me that hug and that credibility, that transferred from her to me, and then I became their trusted lawyer figure. Does that make sense?

Susan Bratton: Absolutely.

Dave VanHoose: So the introduction’s very important. Make sure you have the guru or the person in the position of power introduce you. If you’re doing an own webinar to your own list, still have somebody introduce you to build your credibility up. After you got the introduction, the next thing you want to do in your presentation is you want to grab their attention. What most people do is a bad strategy. What they do from stage or from webinar is they will talk at people, kind of like what a football coach talking to kids, talking at people. That’s not the best strategy. You want to do is you want to bring them into your conversation. And we’re going to use an NLP technique called ‘Have You Ever Wondered.’

So you’re going to create two to three of these statements, something like this: “You know, have you ever wondered what it would look like to be able to make money in real estate in today’s market?” “You know, have you ever wondered what it would look like and feel like to be able to become financially free?” “You know, have ever wondered what it would feel like to be able to have so much money you can travel the world?” And so what you’re doing is you’re exciting their imagination and then you’re bringing them into your conversation. Strategy number three you want to do in the intro is you want to get them at the what they call a ‘Yes State.’ All successful sales people know that seven yes’s equals a sale, right?

Susan Bratton: Yeah.

Dave VanHoose: And so you want to make sure you get them into what they call a ‘Yes State.’ So if you’re speaking from stage you could do a strategy like this: let me ask you this question Susan, what do you think the number one reason why somebody comes to a seminar is? What do you the number one reason is?

Susan Bratton: To learn something that makes the happy or money.

Dave VanHoose: Money, you got it. You’re absolutely right. So the number one reason that people come to a seminar or on your webinar is to make more money. So what majority of speakers you’ll see them do is they’ll ask a question, “By show of hands, how many of you want to make more…”

Susan Bratton: Money.

Dave VanHoose: Put them up and say “Oh yeah.”

Susan Bratton: Oh yeah.

Dave VanHoose: So what they’re doing is they’re getting them into what they call a ‘Yes State.’ Now what you…

Susan Bratton: Now how do you do that in a webinar? What’s the best way to do that in a webinar?

Dave VanHoose: Great question. So on a webinar you can’t ask people to raise their hand behind their computer, so we’re going to have to assume the yes state. “Yeah, I know most of you on this call want me to show you today how to put more money in your pocket. I know most of you have been asking me to show you a five proven step principles to make money in today’s market.” So you’re just going to have to assume the yes state. Does that make sense?

Susan Bratton: Yeah, that was helpful. Thank you.

Dave VanHoose: So what we want to do is we want to get small agreements to get big agreements. Small commitments equal big commitments.

Susan Bratton: I really like this yes state thing. Are there any other particular little nuances of inducing the yes state that you can tell us? ‘Cause I think that’s really critical. There’s a very fine line, when you get someone on a webinar, especially if you’re B2B and you’re selling at a professional level, and if you get on the phone, you know, you get on a webinar and you’re like, “Now most of you want to get an email marketing system” or whatever, people are going to be like, “That’s so bullshit Dave…”

Dave VanHoose: Yeah.

Susan Bratton: You know what I mean? So how do you create a lot of credibility without that kind of fakey sales bravado?

Dave VanHoose: You know, it’s a great question, and you know what, it’s so funny. This crazy, what I want to say selling stuff, it is cheesy and unfortunately it works.

Susan Bratton: I know. I’ve really got to…. I know, I know. I’ve really had to overcome that. I mean a lot of times it hits me wrong and then I don’t do it and my stuff doesn’t work well, and then I stick in all that dorky shit and it works. It bums…

Dave VanHoose: Absolutely.

Susan Bratton: It kind of bums me out. Why is that?

Dave VanHoose: Well unfortunately, lets just take a look at what a majority of people are doing. A majority of people are watching TV. This is low energy type behavior and activities. And if you look, look at infomercials. How do infomercials sell? And look at all the people, and if you watch an infomercial it is a cheesy sales pitch. And unfortunately they work. And so we want to model other success, and so unfortunately a lot of the things that I’m going to be teaching today is kind of geared and modeled off infomercials and the reason why is because it works. And, you know, I feel the same way. It’s like I hear so many people, “Dave, I’m not going to do that. You know, that doesn’t work. I’m just going to tell them the price is this.” And then I’ll ask them, “How much did you sell?”

Susan Bratton: Zero.

Dave VanHoose: Nothing. Exactly. So yeah…

Susan Bratton: You know, it’s interesting too – I’m sorry to interrupt. I was going to tell you that I saw Ryan Lee on the Underground 007 stage and…

Dave VanHoose: Sure.

Susan Bratton: I guess he had just come from like a [inaudible] Ecker conference or something ‘cause he kept saying, he kept inducing the, you know, the…

Dave VanHoose: Yes state?

Susan Bratton: the yes state by saying, you know, “Blah, blah, blah, yes or yes.” And people would go “Yes”, and he’d go “Yes or yes,” and he did this like yes or yes thing. It was a little bit…

Dave VanHoose: Yeah.

Susan Bratton: kooky, but he did it with so much charm that people enjoyed it. So have you heard ways like that, that “Yes or yes,” or, how do you do different people get people to actually respond to the yes on the stage?

Dave VanHoose: Well that is a beautiful awesome question by the way because one of the, the very first sale of your stage presentation is get them into a yes state. So that’s the very first sale of your presentation. So you might use a strategy like this: “By a show of hands, how many of you would like me to show you how to make more money? Put them up and say ‘Oh yeah.’” What will happen is about 50% of the room will raise their hand, and the other 50% won’t. So you’ve got to use the strategy to make sure that you force the response.

Now you could say something like, “By a show of hands, how many of you want me to show you how to make more money? But them up and say ‘Oh yeah’. If your hand isn’t up right now you can go ahead and leave, ‘cause what’ I’m about to share with you today is some proven systems.” So that’s a way that you can smack people, because if you can’t get them to raise their hands on the stage [inaudible], they’re not going to run to the back of the room. So that’s one strategy. Now that’s a very, very powerful strategy, but you’ve got to be in line with who you are. And so me, that’s not my strategy I use, so I use something like this: “You know, by a show of hands how many of you want me to show you how to make more money? Put them up and say, ‘Oh yeah.’” And then about half the room will get their hands up. I’ll say, “Friends I flew all the way from Tampa Florida to be here, and Tony Robbins wanted me to share with you some amazing strategies. Seriously, how many of you would like me to show you how to make more money?” And then what I’ll do is I’ll use my physiology, I’ll take my right hand and I’ll force and I’ll wave and make sure people get their hand up. And I won’t start my presentation until I get everybody to agree with me, because if I can’t get them to raise their hand, they’re not going to run to the back of the room and give me their credit card. Does that make sense?

Susan Bratton: It does. So it’s very important that you do that, and I think on a webinar, which is what we’re trying to do here…

Dave VanHoose: Sure.

Susan Bratton: when you induce the state of yes, I like the idea of most of you told me you want, many of you have been asking for, I think that is a really good strategy. Is there anything you can add to that to get them to be a yes in their minds, something even more than many of you want? How would you get that person to say, “Well yeah, I want that,” in their mind?

Dave VanHoose: Well you’re going to be able to just get a little bit of it, but I want to do next is talk to you about framing.

Susan Bratton: Okay.

Dave VanHoose: And framing is what’s going to happen is what you want to do on a webinar is you’ve got the challenge of people dropping off the webinar or leaving before your pitch at the end. And so the next strategy, what you want to do in your intro is what they call ‘framing.’

Susan Bratton: Okay.

Dave VanHoose: And framing is very, very powerful. So what is happening in communication between human beings is somehow we’ve kind of lost our communication level. What I mean by that is human beings beat around the bush. They don’t tell people what they want to do to them or they don’t explain to them. They…

Susan Bratton: Got it.

Dave VanHoose: beat around the bush.

Susan Bratton: All right, so you’re setting the context of your connection with them. You’re creating the container of what’s going to happen so they understand the plan. You’re giving them the plan.

Dave VanHoose: Absolutely.

Susan Bratton: All right, how do you do it?

Dave VanHoose: And that’s perfect… Well great. So let me just say you what a hypnotist will do, is I’ll do something like this if I have a patient that I’m working with to hypnotize. Well a hypnotist will do something like this: they will frame somebody, they will tell them what they’re going to do to them. And I may say something like this: “In a moment, I’m going to begin counting backwards from ten to one. The moment I say the number ten your body will begin to relax.” And so what we’re doing is we’re basically framing people, we’re telling people what we’re going to do.

So in your webinar what you want to do is you want to create a slide that’s going to frame them. It’s basically going to be what you’re going to covering during the presentation. And so just think of this slide as like the front page of the newspaper, and this is going to have remarks like, “You know, Brett Favre is going to retire. More on page 5C.” And so what people want to do is they hear that, they want to then go look at it. So you want to do is you want to frame people, and you want to use things like this: “You know, in a moment I’m going to share with you my five keys to success. Today I’m also going to talk about the five things you need to do about doing real estate in today’s market. In a moment I’m also going to share with you and teach you this.” And so what you want to do is you want to excite their imagination. You want to frame them. Does that make sense?

Susan Bratton: Yeah, you’re setting them up, you’re future pacing them for what you’re about to, for the content, the valuable content that they came to get, you’re going to let them know you’re going to give it to them.

Dave VanHoose: Absolutely.

Susan Bratton: And then there’s reciprocity. They appreciate that you’re true to your word and you’re going to give them those things.

Dave VanHoose: Yeah. The next thing you want to do in your presentation is you want to build up your credibility. You want to do it in a way that you’re not bragging, but you just want to make sure that you’re building your credibility up because if you think about this, if I was speaking on stage about real estate or Donald Trump was speaking on stage about real estate, who would people listen to more? Donald Trump, right?

Susan Bratton: The Donald.

Dave VanHoose: Right. And now why would they do that? Because he has more…

Susan Bratton: Experience.

Dave VanHoose: Credibility, right?

Susan Bratton: Yeah.

Dave VanHoose: Yeah.

Susan Bratton: Mm hmm.

Dave VanHoose: Credibility. So you want to create a slide and you want to do it so you’re not bragging, but you want to create a credibility slide, because when the guru speaks people listen, right? And so that’s what you want to do. You want to make sure that you build up your credibility talking about your past accomplishments, you know, why you’re the expert, what set you apart. And so you want to create this credibility slide of why you’re the expert and why they should listen to you. The next thing you want to do is after – so that’s all in the intro. You’re going to be creating all that in your intro. The next thing of your presentation is you want to tell them your story. Now write this down, everybody on this call, is stories sell, facts tell. And the reason why is because if you think about it, human beings, we have been trained and we have learned through stories, right? So when we’re a kid our mom reads us what? Stories, right?

Susan Bratton: A story, yeah.

Dave VanHoose: Yup. And we go to school, a teacher teaches us through… stories. When we go to a movie a movie is a story. And so you want to become a storyteller. So right here in the presentation you’re going to tell what you call your back-story. Now the beautiful thing about the story is that what you’re accomplishing by doing this is you’re building repertoire with them and you’re also doing is what we’re seeing in today’s market is people have to like you and trust you before they buy.

And so in your story is the time where you’re going to get them to like you and through your story they’re going to start to connect with you, and then they’re going to be able to trust you because if they don’t trust you they’re not going to buy. And so what you’d like to do is have your story, and then, you know, in your story if possible, if you have what they call like a ‘crash’ where, “Hey, I was working in my job and I lost my job” or “I was in the real estate market and the market changed on me and I lost everything,” you want to have what they call this sort of crash or something, lets just say something came out from under you, you crashed. You want to bring the energy down on the call. And then what you want to have is what they call this pivotal point where something changed, and something changed.

So it might be something like this, “You know, I was a professional football trainer, you know, and I won the championship. And then I had a serious back injury, and I had to get surgery and I was paralyzed.” And you bring them down and then at that low point, “And then I found real estate and I did my first real estate deal and I made $42,000.” And so what you want to do is you want to take them through a crash, and then you’re going to have what they call this ‘pivotal point’ of what changed for you, and then you’re going to tell your story about how this system or how this process has changed your life.

Susan Bratton: That’s also called a hero’s journey, and you can Google that, hero’s journey circle, and I think that is helpful for people, don’t you?

Dave VanHoose: Absolutely. They want to, really one of the most important things of your presentation is the delivering and telling a great story. So after you tell your story, now if you’re speaking from stage I want to just share this with because this is a pretty important strategy you have to understand. Most speakers, what they do is they do the wrong thing. When they’re speaking from stage that’s the worse place you want to be. Most people think, “Well I’m a speaker, I’m going to be up on stage. I got the stage up there.” But think about the psychology of this. Subconsciously you’re on stage and the people are out there. There’s like an imaginary line between you and them, and there’s resistance.

So what you want to do is when you tell your story from live stage you want to get off the stage and you want to get out into the crowd and statistics have shown that as a sales person the more that you touch somebody the more that you connect and the more that you sell. So when you’re telling your story from a live presentation, you want to go out there and connect with people and touch people as you’re telling your story. Now you don’t want to make it obvious, but you’re going to go out there and put your hand on people and make sure you’re connecting with the audience during your story.

Susan Bratton: Is there a way to approximate that virtually? Any kind of verbal or auditory triggers that create a more intimate or physical connection, like a lowering of your voice or something like that that can similarly create a more visceral connection with your listener?

Dave VanHoose: Absolutely. You hit it right on. And so what happens, when I do a webinar, now what will happen is your physiology, the way you treat your body will actually change the tonality of your voice. Your voice will sound different if you’re sitting or your standing. And so when I’m always doing a webinar I’m always standing and I’m moving my arms around, because the more I use my physiology the more my voice sounds excited. And when I get ready to tell my story like you just demonstrated, I will sit down in a chair and then I will lower my voice, I will talk slower and I will have what they call a story tone voice to bring them into my conversation.

Susan Bratton: Yup, conversational tone. That makes total sense. Okay, good.

Dave VanHoose: Awesome. So you’re going to tell your story. Now I know on a stage presentation you want to keep your story longer. On a webinar you want to make sure that your webinar is only 70 minutes. So you’ve got 70 minutes to influence them, get them excited, build repertoire, show them social proof and then show them your product. So we want to decrease our time on a webinar.

Susan Bratton: Okay wait. Why do you want to only go 70, I mean why do you want to go 70 minutes? Why not 60 or 40? Why 70?

Dave VanHoose: Well I’ve tested this and of course, like I told you, I’ve written a lot of presentations, and I’ve worked the majority of the biggest national speakers around the country, and I’ve been testing it, you know, how long should a webinar be? And 70 minutes is the sweet spot. You’re going to get the most amount of sales keeping your webinar at 70 minutes. After 70 minutes you’ll see people start dropping off. They’ll lose their attention span. So 70 minutes is the ideal for to maximize sales. So you want to keep your webinar at 70 minutes. The next thing you want to do is majority of people do not do this. They basically don’t let people know about their opportunity till the end of their presentation.

Now what has happened is what, when I first started doing seminars or webinars about ten years ago, people didn’t really understand the philosophy. And so, you know, something like this would happen: I would put a marketing piece out, say, “Hey, free foreclosure workshop” or “Free foreclosure training on the Internet.” And people would come to these, you know, webinars or to these events. And then the speaker would say, “Oh well by the way, I brought some books and tapes.” That’d almost be like a bait and switch. Like, people didn’t know it. But today people are not stupid. They understand that they’re at an event or they’re on a webinar, that you’re going to try to sell them something.

So that’s like what Dan Kennedy says “the pink elephant in the room.” So you have to let them know that you’re going to have an opportunity at the end of your presentation. Because one of the things you have to understand is once something, somebody experiences something fully it vanishes. Once they know that you have an opportunity, then the resistance between you and them is gone. Does that make sense?

Susan Bratton: Yeah, but how do you set that up? Give us some very specific language for seeding the offer at this first… So what you’re doing is you’re essentially, this is your first seed. Tell us, you know, frame this for us now. You’re going to seed now and then how many other times are you going to seed until you ask for the order, and how do you do it in a way that doesn’t feel pitchy?

Dave VanHoose: Awesome question. That’s a beautiful question by the way. So when I write presentations, I don’t write sales presentations; I write problem solving presentations. And so what I mean by that is you’re not selling people, you’re actually solving their problem. Now I remember listening to Tony Robbins about three years ago, and he’s talking, and he’s like, “Everybody moves from pain toward pleasure.” And I’m like, “What does that mean?” But I didn’t totally fully get it out. So what you want to do in your presentation, right after your story, is you want to target the problem of your clients or prospects. So you want to target their problem.

It might be, “I don’t have the time,” “I don’t have the money,” you know, “I don’t have an online system,” “I don’t have whatever.” So you want to target their problem; you want to illicit the pain that they’re going through; and then what you want to do is you want to solve their problem. So that’s how you start the offer is you want to say, “So most of you on this call, you know, you don’t have the time, you don’t have the money to buy real estate.” So you’re turning up their pain, because if you don’t turn up their pain and offer the solution they won’t buy. So you just target their problem and then you offer the solution. It’s that easy. Does that make sense?

Susan Bratton: Yeah, I want to ask you some more specifics on that.

Dave VanHoose: Sure.

Susan Bratton: So when I elicit the pain, am I saying three or four things that I know about how bad it is and how much worse it can get? Like how do you set that up? Give me the verbiage to set it up.

Dave VanHoose: So what you want to do is after you tell your story you want to say, so, you want to say, “I know there’s a lot of other people,” not them, “a lot of other investors, a lot of other people that are out there that really just want to get in real estate, you know. They just don’t have the time, you know. How many of you, you just really want to get involved in real estate, but you’re working, you just don’t have the time? You know, I know some of you really want to get involved in real estate or you just don’t have the money. It’s like, ‘Dave, I want to get real estate, but I just don’t have the mind about houses.’” So what you’re doing is you’re eliciting their pain, you’re turning up their pain, and then you’re just offering the solution. So you want to go through about four or five pain points, really just turning it up, making them experience that pain, and then you’re going to offer their solution, which is your product or service.

Susan Bratton: And then when you offer it how do you make the offer? So lets just say, you know, “I know that there are a lot of other guys out there that want to make a ton of money in real estate, and they just don’t know where to start to get the information to systematically win, you know, or whatever. So I have this product called Make Money In Real Estate and you should buy it.” Like how do you actually do that segue so that it feels good as the solution that you’re offering?

Dave VanHoose: So what you’ll do is you’ll target the problem, turn up the pain, and then you’re just going to, you know, just say it, just like, “Listen, I’ve solved your problem, and I’ve created the most turnkey, easy to use, push button, done for you, business in a box, franchise-like system that’s going to solve all your problems.” And so you just want to go through it like that, nice easy, just how easy it is is turnkey, easy to use, and then right from there you want to go right back into, after the offer go right into having breaking down your presentation to five keys or five steps or chunking down the steps that they need to make money on Internet, or make money in the stock market, or make money in real estate. And then you want to break it down into five keys or five steps.

Susan Bratton: Okay, I have another question for you.

Dave VanHoose: Sure.

Susan Bratton: I’m sorry to interrupt…

Dave VanHoose: No, that’s good.

Susan Bratton: These are really good and I like to get that like one level deeper here because that’s helpful. So now I want to show you how I’ve chunked this down into five steps for you. Let me ask you a question about this one. So for a lot of products and services I think it’s beneficial to not exactly explain it. I’ll give you an example. Like, the four keys to, you know, reviving her, you know, reviving your relationship.

Dave VanHoose: Mm hmm.

Susan Bratton: ‘Cause that’s on my mind right now, ‘cause that’s what I’m working on is Revive Her Drive. So I don’t want to tell them the actual keys, the actual things they have to do. They need to buy the product to learn that. So what I would do is I would – and I don’t even want to tell them the what less much the how. What I want them to do is buy the product to even learn the what are the four keys to reviving your relationship. I can tell them how they got into this situation, why they have the problem and why it’s not their fault and why it’s not their wives fault. But I don’t want to tell them the five keys. What do you do in that situation when you don’t want to share a lot; you want to keep curiosity high?

Dave VanHoose: Sure. Well what happens is kind of like a double edges sword, because if you’re doing webinars to somebody else’s list or you’re going to their stage, they’re going to want you to bring some kind of value to their people. They don’t just want you to go and just sell them all; you’ve got to give them some kind of content or some kind of teaching. And so what we’re going to do is when you give them the five keys or the five principals you’re not going to tell them how to do it, you’re going to tell them what to do. And you’re just going to excite their imagination, so you’re just going to give them the five keys and just let them know how they can do it. Because even if you told them how to do it or what to do they’re still not going to be able to do it. They’re going to need a complete system. They’re going to need somebody to hold their hand. They’re going to need all of that.

So one of the things that a lot of people have been afraid to do is they’re like, “Dave I don’t want to give away too much.” They want to hold back. But studies have shown that the more you give, the more you make. That means the more you give them, then the more they think, “Man if she gave me this much on this call tonight imagine what else is behind the curtain.” And so when we do our three-day boot camps where we sell $25,000 and $50,000 coaching, what I’m telling our clients to do is to give away the whole farm the first day. Give away all your best information, because, you know, they really can’t do anything anyway, and they think their, “Hey man, if she gave me this much imagine what’s in the coaching program, imagine what’s in the kit.” Does that make sense?

Susan Bratton: Yeah, I understand about what Eban calls ‘moving the free line’, about your golden content – that’s what Frank calls it, giving away your golden content, and that totally makes sense. But if you’re trying to keep your curiosity high, there has to be something you can offer that, I think a lot of people run into what is it that they can teach that isn’t giving away. I’m not sure that we can solve here but I could say that for many people striking the card there about what you give without overwhelming your prospect, without making your solution seem too difficult, without making them think that it’s not right for them based on what you’re telling them, without feeling like they can figure it out and Google it after you’ve done that so that they don’t need to buy your product. I think that’s in many ways the crux of the make or break of a webinar.

Dave VanHoose: Yeah, absolutely. I agree with you. And one of the things that you mentioned, which is right on, is that these folks, as soon as they find it to be hard or too difficult or there’s too much work involved, they’re not going to buy your product or service. What’s happened is that the media has sold everybody on a quick easy fix. So if you’re sick, take a pill. If you’re broke, push a button, you know. If you’re overweight, you know, again, take a pill. And so everybody’s thinking this quick way to get results. And so your message had to be in kind of a line with what they’ve been sold on in the whole, you know, universe. And so you want to make your steps or principals nice and easy. Just quickly go over them.

I have a lot of speakers and info marketers that come into my office when I write their presentations, and they’re like, “Dave I don’t understand it. I know more about Internet marketing or I’ve done more real estate deals than any of these other speakers out there, and I teach everybody all the stuff and then nobody buys my product.” Well I say something like this: “Well I challenge you to think differently.” First of all the people that are on the call or at the event, they don’t care too much about your product. What they do care about is they care about the results your product is promised to give. And so what the key is you want to make sure that you have a lot of social proof stories built into your presentation. And that’s really the key of why they buy. They’re investing in money with you to get a certain result or a result that they think that they’re going to get. Does that make sense?

Susan Bratton: Yes. And one of the things that I want to say about that is that a lot of people stumble, they stumble around social proof when they have a new product or service. What I would recommend for people who have a new product is instead of thinking about end user testimonials that you get experts to review your product and give you expert testimonials. Because that’s what they did, it took me like two years to figure out, and it’s just like a completely no brainer, but I never figured it out for years.

Dave VanHoose: Absolutely. And if you got a customer database or whatever, you know, give your top students or your top people your new product for free. Have them go out and use and then by giving it to them for free, have them then give you a testimonial. Or you can do another strategy, which is have like a testimonial contest. “Hey I’m looking,” you know, you send out an email to your database, “Hey, I’m looking for some new testimonials, getting ready to write my new book or do my new presentation. Hey, I’m giving away a free, you know, iPhone or whatever if I use your testimonials,” and just send it out and you’ll get a ton of great testimonials from people that are using your product. And so we talked about the five keys or the five steps. What you want to do is you want to maybe, lets just say you’re talking in real estate, ‘cause real estate’s pretty easy.

So you might just have lets say five steps to making money in real estate. So like key number one or step number one would be find a foreclosure. So you can talk a little bit about how you find a foreclosure. Then what you want to do is right after you do the first step, you then want to plant testimonials in between each steps and you want to tell a story about how this person used your system and got a result from it. So what we do is we salt eight testimonials in each webinar, or seed I should say, in each webinar, because if you watch an infomercial they don’t really teach that much; alls it is is a story and social proof and then into a close. And so what you want to do is in between your steps or keys you want to put a social proof story between each one of those. Are you getting that?

Susan Bratton: Yeah, and that testimonial should support that point if you can manage to do so.

Dave VanHoose: Absolutely. Correct, yup.

Susan Bratton: Okay.

Dave VanHoose: The next thing you want to do in your presentation is people really don’t buy features. They buy benefits, but they actually buy the benefit of the benefit. And so what they do is they buy the lifestyle. If you think about it, you know, like there’s some certain MLM companies that have come out that really didn’t have anything, but they were selling vaporware. And they basically sold people on the lifestyle that they’re going to get from their product. And so lifestyle sells very well. That’s what people want. And so what happens is some people, if you have a really good system or maybe a really good software or a good program, you kind of get caught in trying to teach people about your product or the features of your product when actually that will actually not cause them to buy. So you want to make sure that you sell them the lifestyle. And basically, you know, the money they’re going to make, the financial freedom, that’s what they really buy. Does that make sense?

Susan Bratton: Yes. And I want to point something else out too. There are two things that you’re doing all through this conversation. One of them is you keep checking to see “Does that make sense,” and keep getting yes’s from me. The other thing that I’ve noticed that you do to keep me and our listeners engaged is that you do this; you’re always having us fill in the…

Dave VanHoose: Blanks. Absolutely. So I’m naturally…

Susan Bratton: I busted you Dave VanHoose. I busted you. I want to know some more of those too. I’m like listening intently in…

Dave VanHoose: Yeah…

Susan Bratton: [inaudible] text of your action, you know, to see what you’re doing.

Dave VanHoose: Yeah, well there’s some really high powered NLP techniques called [inaudible] and presuppositions, and these are some very powerful language patterns and things that you can use into your conversation that work very, very well. And so by me doing that, having you finish my sentences, is actually exciting your imagination and keeping you engaged in the conversation.

Susan Bratton: Definitely.

Dave VanHoose: The other thing that I was doing too that you picked up on is I was doing a lot of trial closes. One of the keys that you want to do with your webinar, your stage presentations is you want to have about 68 trial closes. That means like every other slide or every slide you’re trial closing, you’re trial closing. You don’t want to wait till the end of your presentation to close them, but you want to close them within the first two or three seconds. And so that’s a great way you can do them are trial closes are very, very powerful. And you can do something like this; if you come to a testimonial and say, “Hey, you know, Mr. Smith just made $42,000, you know. How many of you would like to do that, you know?” And you can rabble off a bunch of trial closes and tie them down.

Another great trial close is that I use, and I’ll say something like this: “You know, real estate is one of the most powerful tools to make wealth. You know, how many of you are getting this? Seriously, how many of you are getting this?” And when I say this I anchor down the back table, which means I point to the back table or I’ll anchor down my product. So, “How many of you are getting this?” So in the subconscious they’re hearing “Get this product.” And so these are some really high powerful things that you can do in your presentation about anchoring from stage, if you’re anchoring on yourself or your product or the back table. So if you do have an opportunity to speak from stage, there’s three things you should always be pointing at. You should be pointing at the back table or yourself or your product at all the times during your presentation ‘cause you’re anchoring down those three things massively. Does that make sense Susan?

Susan Bratton: Yeah, I just wonder how – think about this Dave – how can you anchor the product during a webinar?

Dave VanHoose: That’s a very good question. I haven’t figured that out from a webinar yet.

Susan Bratton: So one thing that you could do – and I don’t think this is right, I think this is very rough, okay. But if I say something like, “Now, how many of you are getting this?” and then you show a picture of the product or you show a picture of the lifestyle, okay. So if you’re, if there was some way to use visual imagery that came at the same, that came as the same time you said, “Now so how many of you are getting this, really getting this,” and you showed a picture of what their future looked like, could you do something like that? How would you do something like that? Would that work?

Dave VanHoose: Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, that would work perfectly. So as soon as you get to the lifestyle or the social proof, absolutely trial close them and get them to say yes. The other thing that you want to do is after you show them the lifestyle is the reason why somebody will buy your product is they don’t buy the features, they buy the benefits. And so it’s amazing that nobody in their presentations, right before they get to the close, should have a benefit slide. So “Here’s the benefits of my system. Here’s the benefits of my wealth creation system. You’re going to have more time. You’re going to have more money. The benefit of the system is you’re going to have an unfair advantage. This system is completely done for you and the benefit that you’re going to have financial freedom.”

So what you want to do is right before you go into the close is create a benefit slide telling them the benefits of your program. Then what you want to do is when you segment into the close, what most people do – you’ve probably seen this Susan – is you’ll see a speaker, you’re on a webinar and somebody, you can hear the energy just change and the tension change when they get to the close. You ever felt that before?

Susan Bratton: Well they get all freaked out about selling and they’re not thinking about helping people and changing their lives. So if you’re thinking about it as being serving and not selling and you really believe in your product, there should be no lack of congruity in talking to them about being a purchaser.

Dave VanHoose: Absolutely. And so the best way to also segment into the close is to ask a question to segment into the close. So it might be something like this from stage: “You know, by a show of hands, how many of you would like me to show you the exact system that I’m using and my students are using to generate millions of dollars? How many of you want me to show you the system?” Click. “Well here it is. It’s the wealth and freedom turnkey revolution or whatever.” So what you do is when you get ready to go the close you want to ask a question to segment into the close.

Susan Bratton: And then the people who don’t want to, they’ll drop off, like at this point, or they’ll stay but they’re not sold yet. That’s probably what’s going to happen, right?

Dave VanHoose: Absolutely, yeah, because you haven’t sold them ‘cause you’re doing the trial closes, you’re walking through your presentation, you’re exciting their imagination, and they’re wanting to listen to more. Now if they leave your webinar, guess what, they weren’t a qualified prospect. So, you know, let them know that you’re here to solve their problems and just really don’t beat around the bush, just go right at them. Now when you get into the close you’re then going to present your product, and you’re going to create like a picture of what the whole system looks like.

And then what you want to do is you want to break down your product, each thing that they’re getting, and you’re going to share with them the benefits of each of your systems, building the value of the product. Then what you want to do is after you’ve shown all the components of the product that they’re going to get, you want to come to what they call the ‘summary slide.’ You know, that’s the slide where you show all the things that they’re going to get. Have you ever seen that before?

Susan Bratton: Absolutely.

Dave VanHoose: And so what most people do – and this is a huge, huge, huge challenge – just for most of you that have listened on the call this far, this is the key to your presentation. What most people do is when they get down to the summary slide they might have a real world value of lets just say $12,000 or $20,000. What most speakers will do or info marketers, they’ll say, “This system is $12,000, but what I’m about to do here today is for the first 20 of you that go to www.callwithdave.com and sign up right now, I’m going to take this $20,000 investment and your small investment is only $19.97.” But what they didn’t do is they didn’t sell people on their retail price first before they drop the price down.

And so we’re going to create a strategy that I created which is called the ‘if all’ statements. And so when you get to your summary slide, you say, “It’s a $12,000 investment. So let me ask you this question; if all the system did for you was show you how to do one deal, one house you made an extra $38,000, would it be worth the investment? Absolutely! If all the system did for you was show you how to do one real estate per month, would it be worth the investment? If all this system did for you was show you how to become financially free so you can spend more time with your family, would it be worth the investment?”

So what you’re going to do is you’re going to get them to say yes three times to retail. And then what you’re going to do is then you’re going to do a special one time discount, you’re going to discount that value, and then when you discount that you’re then going to do a call to action. Statistics have shown that 90 percent of sales people or anybody selling something does not tell people what to do at the end of the presentation. So you’ve got to call to action. You’re going to tell them where to go to sign up. If it’s in front of a stage, you’re going to tell them to go to the back table. If it’s from a webinar, you’re going to tell them what site to go to to sign up. So then after that you do a call to action. The biggest thing I want everybody on this call to understand, the number one reason why somebody does not buy your product – and you must know this – the number one reason that’s stopping somebody from buying your product or service is because they were ripped off by somebody else. That is the biggest resistance. So you have to overcome that resistance, and you’re going to do that through a money back guarantee.

So you’ll say something like this, “When you go ahead and go to go www.callwithdave.com you got 100 percent money back guarantee no questions asked. So when you take action today, you’re going to have a 30 day money back guarantee no questions asked,” so you’ve got to overcome the resistance and have some kind of guarantee. Could be a seven-day guarantee, could be a 30-day guarantee. It doesn’t really matter because I’ve been testing it. Seven days, 30 says or even 120 days, it doesn’t matter. They just need to know that they have some kind of guarantee. The next thing you want to do after the guarantee is then you want to stack some fast action bonuses. You want to have three to four fast action bonuses that are only good today, and you want to go over the fast action bonuses and after each bonus you then of course want to do a call to action telling them where to go to sign up after each slide. Then you’re going to come back to your summary slide again where you’re going to have all the products and services that they’re going to get and all the fast action bonuses for taking action today, going over that again, building up the value and again, discounting the price and going over the close one more time.

The problem is that most speakers or info marketers get to the close and they try to rush it, so what you want to do is you want to put the offer and the close twice, you want to go through the offer and close twice, and then if you can create a way – and I mean a way – for them to get your system for free, then you would like to do what they call a free close or an apprenticeship close or “I’ll pay you to go out and do real estate” close. If you can create some kind of a way for them to get it for free, then you’ll really increase your conversions on a webinar. Does that make sense Susan?

Susan Bratton: No, it doesn’t make sense at all. If I’m going to give it away I’m going to get 500 emails from broke weirdoes that, you know…

Dave VanHoose: Okay.

Susan Bratton: I mean like the sob stories you’ve gotten. I used to get, anybody who asked me I used to give our products away for free ‘cause I felt like if they took the effort to write and they really wanted it and they were actually that broke then I should just give it to them. But I saw…

Dave VanHoose: Okay, good…

Susan Bratton: zero value in doing that because they just got a free product and I didn’t benefit, my experts didn’t benefit, my company didn’t benefit, and I didn’t really feel like the universe benefited, you know what I mean? So why would I do this and how do I keep myself from having to get 500 emails from the saddest people in the universe?

Dave VanHoose: Okay, good. Very good question. So what you want to do is if you had the phenomena that everybody wants to get it for free, now if you listened to my words I said you’re going to give them an opportunity to get it for free. And so what you would do is you want to create what they call a ‘free close’. So if you’re in real estate you can do a free close, like, you know, “Sign up with my system today. Find a real estate deal or partner up, do a 50/50 cut and you will get your system for free.” So you’re going to have them invest into your program. Then if they do something they there will be an opportunity for them to get it for free.

So what a lot of guys are doing is this: because we know in this industry unfortunately that, we know that, you know, only four percent of the population really do things, that they really go out and they’re motivated, they really make things happen. It’s a very small percentage unfortunately. And so what a lot of guys will do is say, “Hey, how many of you would like to get my complete wealth and freedom system for free? Go ahead and sign up today. Take the system. Go out and lose 50 pounds,” “Go out and buy real estate,” “Go out and make money on the stock market,” “Do a certain amount, send me a testimonial and proof that you did it to me and I’ll give you your money back.”

Susan Bratton: Hey, can I ask you a quick question? I think this is a really good idea. So if you offer it for free and the thing that you wan them – I liked your idea of, you know, like “Lose 50 pounds.” I was thinking about “If you actually use this product and you have success and you record a video testimonial, I will either refund the cost of your product up to a year later. I’ll give you your money back and you can keep the product. Or you can take that same amount of money that I would’ve given you back and you can buy more of my products with it.” Something like that where they would have to do something that’s a pretty high bar but something you’d actually want and you’d be willing to like give them their money back for it. Would that be something worthwhile?

Dave VanHoose: Well what we’re noticing will happen is just think about the psychology of it. If I signed up for your system and I’m overweight and I lost 50 pounds from using your product, I’m your biggest fan. Am I going to call you up and say, “Hey, I want my $1000 back?”

Susan Bratton: No.

Dave VanHoose: It’s never going to happen. And if I go out and now and bought a bunch of real estate because I was using your course and I made all this money and I’m your big fan, am I ever going to call back and say, “Oh yeah, I want my $1000 bucks back. I just made $50,000 or $100,000 in my first deal”?

Susan Bratton: No…

Dave VanHoose: It doesn’t…

Susan Bratton: you’re going to call me and thank me.

Dave VanHoose: Absolutely! And so giving them the opportunity to get it for free. Now there’s another great way to do it for free is just, “Hey, you know, how many of you would like to get this system for free? Well great, take my system, use it. You’re going to get great results. People are going to be asking you, you know, how you got started. Well refer three people to me and you will get your system for free.” And then that way you can then have, then what you want to do is have the people consuming your product be your affiliates, driving more people to your webinars, and then you can get more sales. And so just having a way for them to think they can get it for free or an opportunity for those people that really take your product, go out and find three people, go out and do a real estate deal with you, go out and lose that 50 pounds to give you that testimonial, it is worth the investment in them to give them the money back, just to even have those very good testimonials are worth it.

And so what we’re noticing is that when you have a free close, it will really double your conversions because everybody in their mind going, “Oh my gosh, I’m going to get this system and I’m going to do it for free.” It just gives them an opportunity to get it for free. And we know that a majority of the folks unfortunately – and this is the way it is – really, you know, take your product and they might not succeed with it. And so that’s, you know, that’s how the whole webinar is structured is you want to, you have the intro, which we talked about, the story, you’re going to have the opportunity, which is the offer, the body and the close of the presentation.

Susan Bratton: How do you finish it off Dave? So I’ve done the “How many of you would like the opportunity to get it for free,” I’ve given them an option for how to do that, and then where do you go to close it off to get those people to place that order?

Dave VanHoose: Okay, good. And so when you’re going through the close, you want to be doing call to action, you know. So each, you know, each time you’re going through over a bonus, you know, “So go ahead and go right now to www.callwithdave.com.” And so you’re directing them, so what you’re doing is you’re closing in waves, and th