If you are wishing that you had a STEP BY STEP process for your product suite….you’re going to want to read this! Ashli Pollard is giving us info (that is normally reserved for her 1:1 clients) so you are getting a GEM of a blog post! Ashli is a business consultant focused on growth and KPI. Read on to learn all about passive income & how passive income and having a STRATEGIC product suite, funnel, and tracking your products performance, is the key to growth and the key to having more business freedom. Ashli also gives us a breakdown on how to create your own product suite that is backed by PROVEN methods from sales psychology 101. Bring your journals because this info can GREATLY improve your business!
So are a coach and a consultant the same thing?? Quick answer = no. There is a time for a place for a business coach, a marketing coach, and a mindset coach and then there is a time and place for a consultant. A consultant has strategies that are PROVEN to work and they are responsible for helping you hit a goal you have been trying to make. There are good coaches that do a great job of holding space, pushing their clients, and focusing on results. The main difference between a coach and consultant is that a consultant’s job is money. It’s results with a number tied to it.
Consultants have more responsibility hanging over their head if you lose than anyone else. This doesn’t mean they are going to hold your hand and make sure that you make the product and set it up right, there is a level of responsibility that is on your side as well. But consultants know the numbers, the excel sheet they use is MASSIVE. Knowing your numbers & spreadsheets is really overlooked if you have started in the online space in an MLM and were coached by a coach >> by a coach >> who’s a coach.
Ashli’s Example >> If I went into a meeting with Rebecca Minkoff and I said “I don’t think we should focus on white for the season” and I didn’t have numbers to back this up, it would never fly. She would ask, what does the data say? Show me some statistics. The numbers are how you understand your path and your future. A consultant will get you results and help you level up along the way to make sure that it happens.
Nina’s Example >> I have had clients that have 1:1 coaching packages priced at 30,000 a year. When I talk with one of their potential clients, I have to explain that there is no guarantee because they are a COACH. They are coming up with the strategy for you to implement. If you are wanting someone to make sure all of the milestones and markers are hit >> you need to hire a consultant. They will analyze and know how to track the numbers, the conversion rates, and how many people are clicking on your cart vs buying.
You can use an excel spreadsheet to map out every product in your product suite. Then you can focus on the campaigns and on all of that money and potential impact that you might be leaving on the table.
For Example: my best selling product is the scale your biz bundle, my worst selling is the standalone affiliate agreement. After my call with Ashli I realized I should run a campaign on this to tell people how important it is and get a surge of people to invest in it. There is so much room for growth, but if I didn’t see that spreadsheet I would not have even thought it was possible to fit in different campaigns, track KPI, track exactly how different products were performing.
Excel might feel overwhelming but it’s not hard, it’s new. If you do something 5, 6 or 7 times and you still can’t get it at all, reach out for help. We fail ourselves often by not even giving ourselves a short opportunity to learn a new skill. Trust that this is going to be new information for some of you and this doesn’t mean that you should shy away from it.
AND you HAVE to take your ego out before you get into this work. Your business is only going to grow to the limit of your mindset. If you are someone who is personally affected by your sales (good or bad) this is something that you have to work on while you are tracking your monthly sales.
Because when you do have a win you are going to say >> I DID IT and when you have a sh*tty month you’re going to say >> I DIDN’T DO IT & neither of those are actually accurate. “You can say “wow I nailed my strategy or my strategy needs tweaking,” always blame your strategy never yourself & never the product. If you blame the strategy you can fix it if you blame yourself, you’ll just beat yourself up.
You can make your business easy and autopilot it in some ways if you just follow this formula:
1. You are going to have a high performing product suite of different options that you provide. This may be:
>> multiple passive income products at 3 different pricing tiers
>> a done with you service (many people to work with you)
>> Custom done for you packages that you will be working with 1:1
You are going to realize that your high ticket products need to relate to your medium ticket and low ticket products. This is because somebody is going to filter through by what they need & what they can invest in it.
2. You will start the month or quarter, talking about the high ticket offer (Ex. >> Square one Accelerator & CEO Skills). Everything in the high ticket hovers in the $1,000-$2,500 range. You will talk about this for a full month because it’s something you really care about. You want to show all the benefits of it including, two Q/A’s & a free webinar so people have access to you and they see what kind of style you operate with. Because they want to see what it’s like to get emails from you, your communication style, if you look professional, do they trust you, and do you show up as an authority. You also want to treat the masculine & feminine decision makers which means showing:
Masculine >> lists, facts, testimonials
Feminine >> showing the client journey and how do you feel, how I can support you.
Do both of those for a full month. If you are selling a $1,000 product, there are some people that don’t want to spend this, they may not want to invest the time or money into it. BUT as you sell this, everything else benefits. People are going to your site, checking out your shop, looking at what else you offer so everything else benefits when you talk about high ticket offers.
3. After that month, sell a low ticket offer >> less than $50. There will be some people that have just started their journey. Do you have something for these people? What kind of option can you have for those low ticket consumers that are only able to invest that much at that time. It might be:
>> A quick solution
>> A 10 page ebook
>> The 20 most questions you get asked in the DM’s
It doesn’t have to be a full webinar. Take care of those people for 2 weeks, they are going to be loving all of the content you have been pushing but they know they can’t invest their time or money. This helps them walk away with something beneficial.
4. You need a buffer period! This will be for 2 weeks and you aren’t going to talk about sales at all. This is a great time for:
>> Ask me anything
>> Market research
>> Let’s get to know each other
It’s also a great time for you to get ready for the next quarter so you don’t have to do all of this then. Pick up what they need for you next quarter so you can adjust your messaging strategy or your product strategy. It’s a good time to show your personality and day to day, it gives you a period to be a human (we all buy from humans!)
5. NOW you want to push a free product >> which is ALSO strategic. You are setting them up for the mindset of buying the high ticket offer because that will come next in your quarter. A free ebook, email challenge, webinar, and within those, you want to have something that they can buy through that too. If you are scratching an inch and saying, “sign up for my free email challenge and we will go through 10 things to upgrade your email game,” at the end of it you should have a $150-$300 product. Then you can say “as a bonus gift you are getting $100 dollars off of my $250 dollar product.” The conversion rate will be through the roof on a month where you were just pushing a freebie.
It’s sales psychology 101. Sales is dating, and if you are dating someone and every day they are asking “what are you doing?” You are like, back off…. I need a breather. So does your audience! You want to court them for a month and then let them know that they can just hangout. You have to make sure people feel nurtured and make people feel like they fit in somewhere.
One of the biggest pillars you should have as a business is ethics and ethical sales, so this is another reason why you offer something for everyone. Outside of 2020, everyone’s financial situation is different. You don’t know what someone’s health situation is, you don’t know the kind of debt someone is in, and the fact that you can offer payment plans is very helpful. AND make sure the payment plans are close to the original price. If it’s $3,500 dollars with the payment plan and then $1,500 to pay in full, that’s not ethical either. Your ethics are going to last longer than everything. You have to care about their money.
If you can’t make the prices exact, you can also add in 5%-15% or so. This helps if a payment doesn’t go through and then you have to pay team members to email and follow up. If someone is going to treat you massively differently because you are coming from a different position of not wanting to pay that much each month then that may not be someone you want to work with. Payment plans are also giving them the benefit of having recurring revenue each month!
Ethical sales is what you put out but it’s also you as a business owner to learn how to negotiate! Because when Ashli reached out to me it was right when the pandemic started and she said “hey I just ended my job and this is what I can afford to pay over this many months. Can I join CEO Skills.”
“Make sure to flex your negotiation muscle too!”
Step 1: Take your biggest product and make a bundle out of it! You have to start with a top down approach. Some people ask “I have this freebie, what product should I create to sell with this?” and that is NOT the way to do it. If you don’t have a product you don’t have a freebie. Start with the biggest thing you possibly can. For Example, Square One Accelerator, 12 week course.
>> There are 8 modules & there are 4 modules I want to be known for. >> getting started, how to maximize your website, how to sell out every time, and how to organize your business as a business owner
So for a bundle you can create 4 priced at >> 97, 147, 247, 347 (depending on how strategic and advanced your bundle is.) BUT I did not make those bundles first! I made Square One Accelerator and I shifted these modules into these bundles, I didn’t recreate & start from scratch.
Step 2: Out of those bundles, what can you sell separately? But don’t sell all of it! In my bundles I have 3-5 lessons, 2-3 different exercises, and some surprises. Take maybe 3 of the 7 things from inside of the bundle and sell them separately. This is an understanding of the psychology of building this product suite.
Ninas Example:
- Scale your Biz Bundle
- New Biz Bundle
- Hiring Bundle
Then you sell each part of the bundle separately!
The trick is to make sure that it is a better deal to buy them all together! To do this, think of the individual prices and then offer 10% off as the bundle and 20% off of the bigger bundle! For Example:
>> 3 x $100 (individual) = 300 (but offer this as 290 or close to that so they get a better deal!)
>> 10 x $100 = 1,000 (but offer this 795 so they are getting one free!)
Start with the biggest thing possible, bundle those into 2-4 areas that make sense to be together and then sell some of the parts on their own.
For Example: If a product walked down the runway in Paris for Prada and that bag was 10,000 dollars (high ticket), that bag but make it in a different material and that will be 5,500 (medium ticket), then make the bag a cross body (low ticket), and then the REALLY low price make it a wallet! This strategy has been around for a LONGER time than the coaching industry.
Step 3: Then and only then can you find a freebie for your email! You will kill it if the freebie comes from the first products & the bundles. That is how you create a product suite!
The framework will be the same in every product. The framework for CEO Skills is divide your business into 5 departments, make sure you are paying attention to all of them Then I will have a 1 hour workshop that talks about those 5 departments that I sell for $147, then have a template bundle of google docs & asana templates, then a legal template, thenand only then will I have a freebie! You need to reverse engineer and it needs to make sense. If you aren’t connecting between the dots between the freebie and why it’s important to get them to the next stage, then they aren’t going to buy the product.
You go from freebie >> tripwire >> upsell >> high ticket offer through the email funnel
That is how you see it from the consumer standpoint but from the business standpoint you need to make sure that when you go from high ticket to low ticket in your product suite and your framework needs to make sense. So when you are going from high ticket to middle ticket to low ticket you are giving them what they need to get to that next stage so they have the foundation to go to the next level and next product.
“It’s not about how much money someone has, it’s about how much they understand about the issue.”
How Ashli set’s up product suites for service based industries (coaches, copywriters, personal trainers) >>> Create something that has 3 sections in a bundle, that can be 3 webinars, 3 downloads, or 3 ebooks. That bundle will be $249, then each of those are going to be $97, you save money with the bundle but you can buy each of them separately. Then if it’s an ebook, you take the table of contents (that can be used as a checklist) and use that as a freebie! Answer a WHAT with the freebie and a HOW with the product!
Another sales psychology tip! >> If you want something “not to sell”, set the price incredibly close to the next product. So if you have a webinar and you want people to buy the bundle for more impact, make the bundle 249 and make the webinar 195. If you want to upsell people make sure to price them that close so it doesn’t make sense to NOT go with the bundle!
If you want to study a product suite that has been strategically built look at Ashli’s shop! And if you have any questions send Ashli a DM @ashli_p she’s happy to help! Because once you get to the top of the ladder you have the responsibility as a woman to turn around and pull the next person up. If not you are charging them to get up on the ladder! Pay attention to the people you admire in the online space and think “are they pulling me up the ladder or are they charging me admission?” Those are the two things you want to pay attention to.
“Instead of stalking your romantic crush on instagram in 2021, stalk your CEO crush on instagram. Don’t copy & paste though.”
Building a product suite takes time but tracking these numbers, reserve engineering, and creating quality products will be worth it! All of these tips will lead you to TRUE financial freedom.
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