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📙 [LIVRO] $100M Offers How to Make Offers So Good People Feel Stupid Saying No

is proud to present acquisition.com volume 1 100 million offers how to make offers so good people feel stupid saying no written and performed by Alexi guiding principles there are no rules dedication to Ila you are my ride or die a term used to describe a person usually a woman that is willing to do anything for their partner friend or family even in the face of danger couldn't do this without you and wouldn't want to you make waking up every day worth it thank you for being unapologetically you you're a dumb to Trevor you're the best friend a guy could ask for thank you for spending hours upon hours beating up the ideas that became this book with me it would not have been half as good as it is without your relentless drive for simplification and clarity eternally grateful for our friendship you make me feel less alone in this world cheers to becoming old and crotchedy start here outsiz returns often come from betting against conventional wisdom and conventional wisdom is usually right given a 10% chance of 100 times payoff you should take that bet every time but you're still going to be wrong n times out of 10 we all know that if you swing for the fences you're going to strike out a lot but you're also going to hit some home runs the difference between baseball and business however is that baseball has a truncated outcome distribution when you swing no matter how well you connect with the ball the most runs you can get is four in business every once in a while when you step up to the plate you can score a thousand runs this longtail distribution of returns is why it's important to be bold big winners pay for so many experiments jeff Bezos as entrepreneurs we make bets every day we are gamblers gambling our hard-earned money on labor inventory rent marketing etc all with the hopes of a higher payout often times we lose but sometimes we win and win big however there's a difference between gambling in business and gambling in a casino in a casino the odds are stacked against you with skill you can improve them but never beat them in contrast in business you can improve your skills to shift the odds in your favor simply stated with enough skill you can become the house after beginning a series of books on acquisition it became apparent that I could not talk about any other topic without first addressing the offer the starting point of any conversation to initiate a transaction with a customer what you are literally providing them in exchange for their money that's where it all begins this book is about how to make profitable offers specifically how to reliably turn advertising dollars into enormous profits using a combination of pricing value guarantees and naming strategies i call the proper combination of these components a grand slam offer i chose this term partially in homage to the above quote from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and because like a grand slam in baseball a grand slam offer is both very good and very rare additionally to extend the baseball metaphor it takes no more effort to make a grand slam offer than to strike out the difference is dictated by the skill of the marketer and how well he connects his offer with his audience's desires in business you can have so- so offers the singles and doubles that keep the game going pay the bills and keep the lights on but unlike baseball where a grand slam scores a maximum of four runs a grand slam offer in the business world can score you a thousand full payoff and a result in a world where you never need to work again it would be like connecting with the ball so well during one single at bat that you automatically win every World Series for the next hundred years it takes years of practice to make something as complicated as hitting a major league fast ball into the bleachers look effortless your stance vision prediction ball speed bat speed and hit placement all must be perfect in marketing and customer acquisition the process of getting new customers there are just as many variables that must all align to truly knock it out of the park but with enough practice and enough skill you can turn the wild world of acquisition which will throw curveballs at you every day into a home run derby knocking offer after offer out of the stadium to everyone else your success will look unbelievable but to you it will just feel like just another day at work the greatest hitters of all time also have many strikeouts just as there are many failed offers in the track record of great marketers we learn skills through failure and practice we do this knowing that nine times out of 10 we will be wrong we still act boldly hoping for that offer we connect with so well that it results in our big payoff the good news is that in business you only need to hit one grand slam offer to retire forever i have done this four or five times in my life as for my track record I have a 36 to1 lifetime return on my advertising dollars over my business career consider this my lifetime batting average if you will that means for every $1 I spend on advertising I get $36 back a 3600% return that is my average over 8 years and I continue to improve this book is my attempt to share that skill with you with a specific focus on building grand slam offers so you can experience the same levels of success it's also the first in a series of books meant to get entrepreneurs to financial freedom in plain words you money subsequent books in the series will look more deeply at getting more customers converting more prospects into clients making those clients worth more and other lessons I wish I'd learned earlier in scaling my businesses pro tip: faster deeper learning by reading and listening at the same time here's a life hack I discovered a long time ago if you listen to the audio book while reading the ebook or physical book you will increase your reading speed and retain more information the contents are being stored in more places in your brain this is how I read most things if you want to give a try go ahead and grab the audio version and see for yourself you might find it as valuable as I have as someone who struggles to stay focused it took 2 days to talk this book out loud and record it i figured I'd put this hack at the beginning of the book so you had a chance to do it if you found the first chapter valuable enough to earn your attention section one how we got here the ugly truth chapter 1 how we got here magic will find those with pure hearts even when all seems lost morgan Rhodess december 24th 2016 christmas Eve the room was pitch black my shoes stuck to a floor covered in dried soda and crushed bits of candy my nostrils were full with the smell of stale popcorn we had just shown up too late to get good seats and ended up pressed near the front of the theater just a few rows in front of me the movie's blazing projection occupied my entire field of view in the reflected glow I could see the outlines of Ila's family's faces they may as well have been hypnotized i envied them they sat entranced soaking in their paid time off for Christmas must be nice anybody else would have missed it but Ila my girlfriend at the time knew me too well anybody else would have thought I was watching the movie but Ila could tell I was staring blankly at the screen my eyes not tracking with the movie my face was pale my cheekbones and jawline appeared gone weeks of chronic stress had killed my appetite "what's wrong?" she asked i didn't answer she rested her hand on mine to get my attention i didn't react within moments her fingers tightened around my wrist and she looked at me her eyes searching for mine "your heart is racing," she whispered concerned "without asking," she took my pulse "it was 100 beats per minute nearly twice what it should be for a fit 27-year-old male at rest in a cool dark room." "What's going on?" she asked more forcibly still whispering "the truth is I was terrified." "A few hours earlier I looked like a giant i sat scrunched up in a children's miniature playchair my knees almost touched my chest even with my feet firmly planted on the old beige carpeted floor my laptop felt hot sitting at top my steeply angled knees dolls and toys were scattered around me they stared at me with wide eyes and toothy grins motionless i had been their entertainment for the past few weeks i was in Ila's parents house they had recently become grandparents and used the spare bedroom as a playroom when their children visited i didn't have a place to live so they were letting Ila and I stay there quote "As long as we need it," end quote they had let me use the children's playroom as my office for my business which at this point felt almost as make believe as the stories they had told their grandchildren in this room i literally felt like I was playing dress up except the stakes were real and this was my life my ears were hot and red from the phone being pressed against them for what felt like hours i kept switching hands because my arms would tire from holding the phone up for so long i'm sorry Mr homozi the voice on the other end of the line said "We have to hold on to these funds for the next 6 months we've seen some irregular activity so this is precautionary." "Are you kidding me 120 grand?" I said "A precaution?" "I'm sorry sir our underwriting team." Yeah yeah i heard you I said cutting him off i don't accept that sir it's not up to It's just our What am I going to tell my salesman there's a baby on the way and another one are you going to tell him he's not going to buy his pregnant wife and newborn food are you going to pay his mortgage for him i was seething sir he began again with unfazed apathy just trying to deliver the news it's not yours to take my aggression was quickly turning into desperation just send me half so I can pay my employees it's Christmas Eve for sake sir we're going to be holding on to the entirety of your funds for the next 6 months per your agreement the voice faded into the distance i hang up and check my accounts $23,36 i owed my salesman a $22,000 commission check for $120,000 in sales I never got without wanting to give myself the opportunity to think about I wired it to him negative $22,000 payment successful balance $1,36 the sunlight blinded me as we emerged from the matinea family shuffled in and out through the revolving doors making their happy memories i was in a daysaze ila led me to the car her hand wrapped firmly around mine what's wrong what happened she asked the money isn't coming what do you mean it's delayed i exhald in defeat they're keeping it all can they do that apparently I said stoically trying to maintain my composure in front of her parents what are you going to do about the commissions i already paid him everything I said without looking at her ila's concern turned to dread we sat in silence the whole way home i stared out the window she held my hand in hers it was more comforting than I anticipated we'll get through this 30 days earlier I decided to go all in on this new business I called Gym Launch here was the idea i would fly around the country to gyms and fill them up to full capacity using this new methodology that hinged on an offer I had perfected when I owned my chain of gyms leading up to this moment I had sold five of my six gyms the funds from selling them my life's work I'd put into an account that I had with a new partner this money was supposed to be the seed money for our new company i was finally going to realize some level of success my alarm went off i groggly swung my arm over blindly clawing at the bedside table i switched off the alarm while Leila somehow managed to sleep through the commotion i laid there silently pulling up the bank accounts a daily ritual the balance said $300 wait that can be right there was $46,000 in here yesterday my adrenaline surged looking closer I saw minus 45,700 payment successful i was frantic the money from selling all my gems was gone i checked where the money went to my partner end quote he had taken all the money out the last four years of my life had vanished that fast i officially had nothing and even last to show for it no gyms no equipment no employees nothing i felt dead inside adding insult to injury in that same 30-day period my mother was in critical condition because of a near fatal accident and was still under 24-hour supervision and I had told my car in a head-on collision at 60 mph and earned a DUI as my consolation prize this was the cherry on top my one saving grace during this time was selling a new challenge offer at a gym and collecting all the cash up front as my fee for turning their business around so I did the only thing I knew i sold my salesman had done $120,000 in a single month and I owed him $22,000 in commissions the problem was the $120,000 never came "we need to talk," I said as Leila and I went to the other room i worked up the courage to speak but stared at the floor embarrassed "i've got nothing," I said to her "i'm a sinking ship and you don't have to stay here with me." She grabbed my chin and pulled my face towards hers so she could look into my eyes i would sleep with you under bridge if it came to that i would have cried tears of joy but I was so emotionally exhausted that my response appeared apathetic i wouldn't stay with me so are we still going to do these launches starting tomorrow she asked all my friends quit their jobs to do this she was being matter of fact but it still stung i felt defeated listen this could go horribly wrong i trust you we'll figure it out i had two things left at this point a grand slam offer and an old business credit card with a $100,000 limit from when I had my gyms on the day after Christmas 2 days after the gut-wrenching call with the payment processor we were scheduled to launch six new gyms at the same time between airfare hotels rental cars gas and ad spend all multiplied by six I was going to be spending $3,300 per day of money I didn't have my last dollar had gone to paying my salesman i still remember my hand shaking as the advertisement went live off to on just like that I was going into debt at a rate of $412 per working hour just like that $3,300 per day began getting deducted from my account minus $3,300 I now officially have nothing - 3,300 I now officially have less than nothing - 3,300 I have $10,000 less than nothing - 3,300 this one decision is going to ruin my future forever but things started shaping up here's what happened that month January 2017 as documented by my old processing record that I dug up in the physical book there's a chart that I'm referencing you can see the month along the left column and the revenue collected on that month along the right we made $100,117 it was just enough to cover the $3,300 a day that had been coming off the credit card it was actually working i could hardly believe it i threw the Hail Mary and the universe had caught it i went from looking up bankruptcy lawyers to figuring out what to do with $3 million in profits accured within the first 12 months it felt surreal and in hindsight it still kind of does by the end of the year we were doing $1.5 million per month 12 months from then $4.4 million per month 24 months after that we crossed $120 million in sales and donated $2 million to help fund equal opportunity in low-income areas we met and befriended Arnold Schwarzenegger my lifelong hero and we were asked to become board members of his charity After School Allstars 12 months after that we now have a portfolio of seven eight figure and multiate figure companies across a variety of industries: photography publishing fitness business consulting beauty and business types: brick and mortar chains software service e-commerce training and education our portfolio companies now do about $1.6 million per week and growing i say this because honestly I can't believe it all of this was because of a girl who believed in me a credit card and a grand time offer i know I teleported you from rag to riches and the natural question is how that's what I'm going to use the rest of this book and the remaining books and free courses in acquisition.com to break down the skill of making offers saved me from bankruptcy and likely saved my life i've made so many mistakes in my life i've made so many bad life decisions i've hurt people knowingly and mistakenly i've done bad things with good intentions i say this because I am human i don't pretend to have the answers i have my own demons that I battle every day but despite my many shortcomings I've still managed to get really good at this one thing and I'd like to share that with you i can teach you how to build great offers i don't know who you are yes you the one listening to this but thank you from the bottom of my heart thank you for allowing me to do work I find meaningful thank you for giving me the most valuable asset you have your attention i promise to do my very best to give you a positive return on it here's your first piece of good news if you're listening to this then you already are in the top 10% most people buy stuff and then promptly ignore it i can also throw out a spoiler the further you get in this book the bigger the nuggets become just watch this book delivers the world needs more entrepreneurs it needs more fighters it needs more magic and that's what I'm sharing with you magic chapter two grand slam offers make people an offer so good they would feel stupid saying no travis Jones i was 23 years old and to quote Ruth from Ozark I didn't know about but there I was in a Las Vegas penthouse room along with 10 business owners learning about marketing and sales in my most fashionable beast mode t-shirt a shirt I had gotten for free and one of the five shirts I owned at the time truthfully I was anxious self-conscious and thought I was making a huge mistake i paid $3,000 of money I didn't have to get a seat at the table i knew I needed to learn everyone there had a business except me i was planning on starting one a gym tj the organizer had multiple successful businesses while going over the agenda I remember he made an off-hand comment about making a million that year $1 million i was felt I want to be like this guy i'll do anything the problem was I didn't know what any of them were talking about kpis CPLs conversion rates my head was spinning as I pretended like I knew what they were talking about but I didn't and I'm bad at pretending between sessions DJ found me he could tell I was way over my head tj was kind curious and caring after a little bit of small talk he asked me a simple question that changed my life forever do you want to know the secret to sales i had never sold anything in my life i never even read a book on it i just recently learned what the term even meant seriously i leaned forward intent to download every syllable that he spoke right into my brain i opened my notebook and stared at him with intent i was ready for the secret he looked at me soberly and said "Make people an offer so good they would feel stupid saying no." I nodded wrote it down underlined it and circled it and with that my entire worldview of selling was transformed make people an offer so good they would feel stupid saying no my mind was racing i didn't have to be skilled or even any good i just had to come up with things that anyone would say yes to the greatest game of my life had now begun what this book is about at some point every successful business owner was a entrepreneur a person full of ideas and frustrated at having potential despair something clicks when they realize the horrible trade they and so many people make trading their freedom for falsely perceived security their discomfort compounds and once the discomfort of staying the same surpasses the discomfort of change they take the leap i'm going to be an entrepreneur so I can be free they tell themselves free to do whatever I want whenever I want with whomever I want some learned about entrepreneurship through personal development others got into it through a franchise others bought courses and some just said "Fuck it i'm doing it and I'll make it work and make it work they did most of us opened up shop with the intention of helping people in some way many times this assistance is in some way related to something that's affected us personally we set out to give back by providing to others by helping them solve a problem that once plagued us then again sometimes this isn't our way in in either case we cling to the dream of making more and being freer than we are now many of us thought naively that owning a business would be our crowning accomplishment a final destination when in reality it was just the beginning somehow in the transition between passionate to helping others and owning my first business we gradually realize that we don't even know the first thing about business let alone turning a profit we may know a lot about our passion about why we started the business but that doesn't mean we know anything about succeeding in business much to the disappointment of idealists on the sidelines succeeding in business means getting prospective customers to trade us money for our services our passion for their hard-earned coins that's the agreement the only way to facilitate that exchange to transact to literally carry out business as a business is by making the prospect an offer what's an offer anyways the only way to conduct a business is through a value exchange a trade of dollars for value the offer is what initiates this trade in a nutshell the offer is the goods and services you agree to provide how you accept payment and the terms of the agreement it is what begins the process of getting customers and making money it is the first thing that any new customer will interact with in your business since the offer is what attracts new customers it is the lifeblood of your business no offer no business no life bad offer negative profit no business miserable life decent offer no profit stagnating business stagnating life good offer some profit okay business okay life grand slam offer fantastic profit insane business freedom this book helps entrepreneurs craft those grand slam offers these are the offers that are so effective profitable and life-changing that it seems like they could only be the result of luck that's how it looks to an untrained eye anyway as you likely know now I have crafted thousands of offers over the last decade most have failed some did okay and some struck gold but I never really knew why as Dr bergman a famous Stanford business school professor said "It is far better to understand why you failed than to be ignorant of why you succeeded." But as the data started rolling in what seemed like luck and fortune was closer to a repeatable framework i've been fortunate enough to strike gold enough times to document these frameworks and have gotten lightning to strike twice i've put the steps and components of those frameworks in a logical and digestible format so they are actually useful today like now I'm giving you action instead of a sad but typical book of vague business theories and mental masturbation the two main problems most entrepreneurs face and how this book solves them although you can make a list of the problems you face a mile long which is a great way to stress yourself out all these problems typically stem from the big two kahunas one not enough clients two not enough cash in other words excess profit at the end of the month seems obvious right it costs more time and money to get clients thereby solving issue one and that money is coming from the profit margins which create problem two what's more annoying prospects savagely compare and belittle our services in favor of cheaper and crappier alternatives with the cheapest one winning this of course when winning means getting to work for more for even less sad face let's say you slash prices to get more customers you may even have a full client load but here you are barely making it because profit margins are too thin competition becomes a race to the bottom if you're struggling with one or both of these issues you're not alone i've been there heck I think every entrepreneur has these same challenges i also want you to know that it's not your fault typical models weren't designed for profit maximization they were designed by companies who have boatloads of funding and can operate at a loss for years when these models are used in the real world business owners just barely get by they essentially buy themselves a job and work 100 hours a week to avoid working 40 crappy trade my guess is that if you're anything like me you signed up for something better keep an open mind the contents of this book if executing can transform your business fast it's okay if you're not into money numbers or business models i've done all that work for you i'm walking through the process step by step in these pages i'm going to explain each of the two big problems we touched on above in detail including why they don't work then I'm going to show you the solutions and to wrap this adventure up I'll explain how to enhance value to maximize how much you make per customer so that you can outmarket everyone and stack cash we use this offer model for every niche we work with cyros dentists gyms agencies plumbers roofers dog walkers physical products software brick and mortar stores and so many more and it's amazing how fast things can improve with each and every one of them when they use this framework what's in it for you i've made every dumbb mistake in the book now you can learn from my embarrassing brutal multi-million dollar fuckups without having to suffer the same pain yourself building these businesses has been a very hard and emotional journey for me i wouldn't trade these experiences for the world however if this book helps just one entrepreneur avoid suffering as I did keep their business open or accomplish their dreams it will all be worth it if you're willing to exchange the time it takes to watch two episodes of your favorite TV show and really study this book and if you implement even a single offer component I can guarantee you will add more clients and more dollars to your bottom line reading this book and taking it to heart will be the single greatest return on time for your business nothing else will allow you to do what this book can do in the same amount of time that is a promise as a side benefit implementing a new offer is about one of the easiest things to do in a business so you really can do this this isn't some management practice or culture building hoodoo this is the real how you sell for lots of money type stuff what's it for me i give all these materials this book the accompanying course and all other books and courses which you can find at acquisition.com for free or at cost in order to help as many people as humanly possible make more and serve more i've made these with the intention of providing more value than you can get from a $1,000 course any $30,000 coaching program and hilariously more than $200,000 college degree and I do this because although I could sell these materials in that format I just don't want to i've made my money doing this stuff not teaching how to do this stuff contrary to most of the marketing community at large so my model is different i'll explain more in a second that being said there are two key arch types I'm trying to provide value to with my published materials for arch type number one entrepreneurs under $3 million per year in revenue my goal is to help you get there and earn your trust try just a couple of tactics from this book watch them work then try a few more watch them work and so on the more you see results in your own business the better once you succeed you'll become architect number two entrepreneurs at minimum between three to 10 million a year in revenue once you get there or if that's you now I'd be honored to invest in your business and help you cross 30 50 or even 100 million plus i don't sell coaching masterminds or courses or anything like that instead I have a portfolio of companies I take equity interest in i use the infrastructure resources and teams of all my companies to fasttrack the growth but don't believe me yet we just met if you're curious my business model is simple just like the four-piece pyramid logo of acquisition.com step one provide value at no cost fare nexus to what the rest of the marketplace charges for step two have entrepreneurs use the materials that actually work and make money helping more folks step three earn the trust of the hyperexeater business owners who use the frameworks to scale their businesses to three to 10 million per year and beyond step four invest in those businesses to make more impact at scale while helping every single other entrepreneur for free if you look carefully the process reverses engineers success i think it's pretty cool here's how i know these business owners can execute the frameworks I have without handholding and therefore would be very likely to succeed with the next set of frameworks getting to 30 million 50 million 100 million look different than getting to 3 to 10 million they know my style works for them because it already has so we operate on shared trust i trust they can execute and they trust that our stuff works again because it already has all while helping everyone else vote for free so it allows me to preemptively avoid failures and dramatically increase success likelihood let me show you how much at the time of this writing every business I have started since March of 2017 has achieved a $1.5 million per month run rate at least according to the Small Business Administration the odds of a single business even achieving $10 million a year or $833,000 per month which is almost half of what I just said are 4% or 1 in 250 having it happen four times in a row is4% *4%*4%*4% or in other words very very very low probability that it was luck as such I can say with conviction that we know how to recreate success using the frameworks I share over and over again they work because they are timeless business principles i actively visualize every day how it felt to wake up in the middle of the night in cold sweats wondering how I'd make payroll that gut-wrenching meditation keeps me hungry as an entrepreneur but also grateful for my security and peace of mind i want the latter for you and anyone else who gives a damn about what they do fair enough cool so let's get to it basic outline of this book this book is intended to be a resource as a resource i mean it will be something that you read through then keep in your toolbox coming back to it again and again and says "Never memorize anything you can look up business is not a spectator sport you're not cramming for some midterm and you're not some limpisted philosopher you do work and to work you need tools this my friend is one of those tools." General outline section one how we got here you just finished it section two pricing how to charge lots of money for stuff section three value create your offer how to make something so good people line up to buy section four enhancing your offer how to make your offer so good they feel stupid saying no section five next steps how to make this happen in the real world for free courses and books so good they grow your business without your consent go to acquisition.com section two pricing how to charge lots of money for stuff chapter three pricing the commodity problem think different steve Jobs go or die is a core tenant at our companies we believe every person every company and every organism is either growing or dying maintenance is a myth what this means is if your company isn't growing it's dying this is a sobering reality for many of us i learned the hard way and my business suffered for a long time because of it let me explain the market is continuously growing the stock market grows at 9% per year if we aren't growing at 9% per year we are falling behind maintenance in the most generic sense would be 9% per year growth year-over-year furthermore if you're in a growing marketplace then you might have to grow at 20 to 30% per year just to keep up or risk falling behind so you can see how maintenance is a myth so then what does it take to grow thankfully just three simple things one get more customers two increase their average purchase value three get them to buy more times that's it sure there are lots of ways to acquire customers and zillions of ways to increase order value and purchase frequency but simply put that's it those are the only three ways to grow example if I sell 10 clients a month and a client is worth $1,000 to me over their lifetime through average card value times number of average purchases then my business will cap at $10,000 per month aka 10 * $1,000 10 new clients per month times $1,000 lifetime value equals $10,000 per month in max revenue if you want to grow you've either got to sell more clients every month while maintaining suitable margins or have them be worth more by increasing the profit per purchase or number of times they buy that's it author note only two ways to grow to simplify this concept even more there are really only two ways to grow get more customers and increase each customer's value increasing each customer's value has two sub buckets one increasing profit per purchase two increasing the number of times they buy for the purpose of this book I highlight both of those subbuckets as individual growth paths i did this because I think it will be easier to understand the money models that will come in volume 3 all three getting more customers increasing their average purchase value and getting them to buy more are repeated themes in this book but if you seek simplicity both increasing average purchase value and increasing the number of times a customer buys results in one outcome increasing each customer's value business terms before going any further and to better flesh out the concepts that will follow we should take a second to define and better understand some key business concepts when I stood in that Las Vegas penthouse in my Beastmo t-shirt I was clueless about such terms let me help you be better than well me gross profit the revenue minus the direct cost of servicing an additional customer if I sell lotion for $10 and it cost me $2 my gross profit is $8 or 80% if I sell agency services for $1,000 per month and it cost me $100 per month in labor to run that client's advertising then my gross profit is $900 or 90% note this is not net profit net profit is what's left over after all expenses are paid not just the direct cost of fulfillment lifetime value the gross profit accured over the entire lifetime of a customer this is gross profit multiplied by the number of purchases an average customer will make over their lifetime using the example above if the average customer stays 5 months and they pay $1,000 per month while it cost me $100 per month to fulfill then their lifetime value is $4,500 here's the breakdown revenue equals $1,000 per month time 90% gross margins time 5 months $4,500 lifetime value or LTV note that the indirect costs like admin software rent etc are not included in LTV note you will find different definitions for lifetime value depending on the source the biggest difference is that some sources only count total revenue while others focus on gross profit over the lifespan i focus on gross profit you may also see me refer to this as LTGP or lifetime gross profit in other texts just for clarity sake value driven versus price- driven purchases this book was intended to be a textbook for any business that wants to grow i've spent and continue to spend hundreds of hours on calls and in-person meetings consulting entrepreneurs on crafting their offers i've seen the ones that take off into the stratosphere and those that fizzle having a grand slam offer makes it almost impossible to lose but why what gives it such an impact in short having a grand slam offer helps with all three of the requirements for growth getting more customers getting them to pay more and getting them to do so more times how you ask it allows you to differentiate yourself from the marketplace in other words it allows you to sell your product based on value not on price commoditized equals price driven purchases aka a race to the bottom differentiated equals a valuedriven purchase aka sell in a category of one with no comparison yes market matters which I'll expound on in the next chapter commodity as I define it is a product available from many places for that reason it's prone to purchase is based on price instead of value if all products are equal then the cheapest one is the most valuable by default in other words if a prospect compares your product to another and thinks "These are pretty much the same i'll buy the cheaper one." Then they commoditized you how embarrassing but really it's one of the worst experiences a valuedriven entrepreneur can have this is a massive problem for the entrepreneur because commodities are valued at the point of market efficiency this means that the marketplace drives the price point down through competition until the margins are just enough to keep the lights on just enough to become a slave to their business the business makes just enough to justify the owner waiting anxiously for things to turn around and by the time that lie is realized they are in too deep to pivot at least until now a grand slam offer solves this problem but what does a grand slam offer do all right let's start by defining a grand slam offer it's an offer you present to the marketplace that cannot be compared to any other product or service available combining an attractive promotion an unmatchable value proposition a premium price and an unbeatable guarantee with a money model aka payment terms that allows you to get paid to get new customers forever removing the cash constraint on business growth in other words it allows you to sell in a category of one or to apply another great phrase to sell in a vacuum the resulting purchasing decision for the prospect is now between your product and nothing so you can sell at whatever price you get the prospect to perceive not in comparison to anything else as a result it gets you more customers at higher ticket prices for less money if you like fancy marketing terms it breaks down to this one increase response rates think clicks two increase conversions think sales three premium prices think charging a lot of money having a grand slam offer increases your response rates to advertisements aka more people will click or take action on an advertisement they see containing a grand slam offer if you pay the same amount for eyeballs but one more people respond two more of those responses buy and three they buy for higher prices your business grows i've struck gold on my fair share of offers not because I've got some superpower but because I've just done this a lot of times and failed even more i've sorted through the crap that chronically fails and pocketed all the stuff that reproducibly succeeds and put it into this book here's the key takeaway from all this a business does the same work in both cases with a commoditized offer or a grand slam offer the fulfillment is the same but if one business uses a grand slam offer and another uses a commodity offer the grand slam offer makes that business appear as if it had a totally different product and that means a valuedriven versus price- driven purchase if you have a commodity offer you will compete on price having a price driven purchase versus a value-driven purchase your grand slam offer however forces a prospect to stop and think differently to assess the value of your differentiated product doing this establishes you as your own category which means it's too difficult to compare prices which means you recalibrate the prospect's value meter real life grand slam offer money math before and after quick backstory one of our companies is a software that advertising agencies use to work leads for their customers using the software agencies transform their offer from a commoditized offer of lead generation services to a grand slam offer of pay for performance let me show you the multiplicative effect it has on revenue for business while rounded for illustration sake the values I will share with you are based on real numbers a lead generation agency selling services to brick and mortar businesses experience old commoditized way price driven raised to the bottom commoditized offer $1,000 down then $1,000 per month retainer for agency services I will read through the chart that is displayed advertising spend $10,000 impressions reach 300,000 response rate 0.13 appointments booked 40 show rate 75% appointment showed 30 closing ing percentage 16% appointments closed 5 price $1,000 total $5,000 rorowaz or return on advertising spend.5 to1 here's the breakdown at 0.5 to1 return on advertising spend you lose money getting customers but in 30 days those five customers will pay another $1,000 each bringing you $10,000 in total and breaking even the next month the $5,000 that comes in will be your first profitable month and each month thereafter will be profitable assuming they all stay this is an example of a commoditized service normal agency work there's a million of them and they all look the same commoditized businesses and offers have a harder time getting responses from ads because all their marketing looks the same as everyone else's note it all looks the same because they're all making the same offer you pay us to work we do work maybe you get results from that work maybe you don't it's reasonable but easily duplicated and subject to commoditization this commoditization creates a price-driven purchase you are forced to be priced competitively to get clients and to stay that way to keep them if the client sees a cheaper version of the same thing then the value discrepancy will cause them to swap providers this is a dilemma lose this client the rest of your clients and potential clients or stay competitive your margins become so thin they vanish furthermore it's hard to get prospects to say yes and keep them saying less unless you're hypervigilant about clients commoditizing your business by staying again competitive and that's the problem with the old commoditized way they're able to compare unless you switch to a grand slam offer your prices will keep getting beat down the business eventually dies or the entrepreneur throws in the towel no bueno we want to make an offer that's so different that you can skip the awkward explanation of why your product's different from everyone else's which if they have to ask then they are probably too ignorant to understand the explanation anyways and instead just have the offer do that work for you that's the grand slam offer way let's dive in to see the contrast in sales numbers new Grand Slam offer way differentiated incomparable valuedriven grand Slam offer pay one time no recurring fee no retainer just cover the ad spend i'll generate the leads and work your leads for you and only pay me if people show up and I'll guarantee you 20 people in your first month or you get your next month free i'll also provide all the best practices from all the businesses just like yours daily sales coaching for your staff tested scripts tested price points and offers to swipe and deploy sales recordings and everything else you need to sell and fulfill your customers i'll give you the entire playbook for insert industry absolutely free just for becoming a client so in a nutshell I'm feeding people into your business showing you exactly how to sell them so you get the highest prices which means that you make the most money possible sound fair enough it's clear that these are drastically different offers but so what where's the money let's compare both in the chart below advertising spend $10,000 same as before impressions reached 300,000 same as before response rate 0.33 2.5 times the response rate because you have a more appealing offer so more people respond appointments booked 40 becomes 100 show rate 75% stays the same appoint showed 30 goes to 75 that's just a result of numbers flowing down the funnel closing percentage goes from 16% to 37% 2.3 times the closing because there's more value so more people buy appointments closed goes from 5 to 28 that's just a result of the higher closing percentage price goes from $1,000 to start to $39.97 which is four times the price because we're charging a onetime fee versus recurring the total collected upfront goes from $5,000 to $112,000 that's 22.4 time the cash upfront collected and the rorowaz goes from 0.5 to1 to 11.2:1 which means you're getting paid to get new customers breakdown you spend the same amount of money for the same eyeballs then you get two and a half times more people to respond to your advertisement because it's a more compelling offer from there you close 2.5 times as many people because the offer is so much more compelling from there you're able to charge four times higher prices up front the end result is 2.5 * 2.5 * 4 equals 22.4 times more cash collected up front yes you just spent $10,000 to make $112,000 you just made money getting new customers comparison remember the old way the way you lost half the ads up front with the new way you're making more money and getting more customers this means that your cost to acquire a customer is so cheap relative to how much you make that your limiting factor becomes your ability to do the work you already love doing cash flow and acquire customers is no longer your bottleneck because it's 22.4 times more profitable than the old model yep you read that right this is the part in the action movie where you walk away from an explosion in slow motion this is the exact grand slam offer we used with our software business that serves agencies the numbers can become wild fast i know 22.4x better sounds unreasonable but that's the point if you play the same game everyone else does you'll get the same results everyone else does mediocre you hit singles and doubles keep the lights on but never get ahead but remember the opening passage of this book that when you align all the pieces you cannot out of the park so well that you win for good in my first 18 months in business we went from $500,000 a year to $28 million a year off of less than $1 million in ad spend so when I say 20 to1 50 to1 1001 returns I mean it when you get this right the results are well unbelievable summary points this chapter illustrated the basic problem with commoditization and how grand slam offers solve that this gets you out of the pricing war and into a category of one the next chapter will focus on finding the correct market to apply our pricing strategies to it's one of the most important things to get right a grand slam offer given to the wrong audience will fall on deaf ears we want to avoid that at all costs we must detour from pricing for a moment to learn what to look for in a market it's an essential box to check before continuing on our journey free gift number one bonus tutorial start here if you want a deeper dive go to acquisition.com/training/offers and watch the first video in the free course starring yours truly about how I differentiate offers in businesses I consult with and get them charging premium prices i also created some free SOPs and cheat codes that you can download for free so you can implement faster enjoy pricing chapter 4 finding the right market a starving crowd the seed that fell on good soil represents those who truly hear and understand God's word and produce a harvest of 30 60 or even 100 times as much as has been planted matthew 13:23 NLT a marketing professor asked his students "If you were going to open up a hot dog stand and you could only have one advantage over your competitors which would it be location quality low prices best taste." The students kept going until eventually they had run out of answers they looked at each other waiting for the professor to speak the room finally fell quiet the professor smiled and replied "A starving crowd you could have the worst hot dogs terrible prices and be in a terrible location but if you're the only hot dog stand in town and the local college football game breaks out you're going to sell out that's the value of a starving crowd at the end of the day if there's a ton of demand for a solution you can be mediocre at business have a terrible offer and have no ability to persuade people and you can still make money an example of this was the toilet paper shortage at the beginning of CO 19 there was no offer the pricing was atrocious and there was no compelling sales pitch but because the crowd was so big and so starving rolls of toilet paper were going for $100 or more that's the value of a starving crowd selling newspapers a good friend of mine Lloyd owned a software business that served newspapers for almost a decade they set up digital ad services on newspaper websites with a few clicks and instantly helped them sell a whole new ad product he only charged them a percentage of revenue he added so if they made nothing neither did he it was pure gain for the papers and a great offer but despite having a great offer and natural sales ability his business began to decline being a high achieving entrepreneur he tried all different angles to solve the problem but nothing worked he couldn't figure out what the issue was it was hard for me to see him struggle with this because I think Lloyd is much smarter than I am and the answer seemed obvious to me but watching him go through this has been a lesson that I have taken with me for life before I reveal it what do you think the problem was product offer marketing and sales his team let's break it down it wasn't his product that was great it wasn't his offer he had a zerorisk revshare model it wasn't his sales skills he was a natural salesman so then what was the problem he was selling to newspapers his market was shrinking by 25% every single year he had looked at all the angles except for the most obvious one finally after years of fighting an uphill battle in his market he realized his market was the source of his problems and decided to downsize his company don't worry the story has a second half to illustrate the power of a market as soon as co hit Lloyd pivoted he started an automated mask manufacturing company with new technology he brought the cost per mask down below what people could buy them from for China within 5 months he was doing millions per month same entrepreneur different market he applied his same skill set to a business he had zero experience in and was able to win that's the power of picking the right market i give you that story as a cautionary tale your market matters lloyd is a very smart human he's obviously very capable but we can all be blinded as entrepreneurs because we don't like to give up we are so accustomed to solving impossible problems that we will keep ramming our heads into the wall we hate quitting but the reality is that everyone is affected by their market so how do you pick the right market what to look for there is a market in desperate need of your abilities you need to find it and when you do you will capitalize all while wondering what took you so long don't be romantic about your audience serve the people who can pay you what you're worth and remember that picking a market like anything is always our choice so choose wisely in order to sell anything you need demand we are not trying to create demand we are trying to channel it that is a very important distinction if you don't have a market for your offer nothing that follows will work this entire book sits at top the assumption that you have at least a quote normal market which I define as a market that is growing at the same rate as the marketplace and that has common unmet needs that fall into one of three categories: improved health increased wealth or improved relationships for example Lloyd could have gone through this entire book and nothing in here would have worked for him why because he would be targeting newspapers a dying market that being said having a great market is an advantage but you can be in a normal market that's growing at an average rate and still make crazy money every market I've been in has been a normal market you just don't actually want to be selling iced eskimos here are the basic tenants of what I look for in markets let's run them before we return to the offer when picking markets I look for four indicators one pain two purchasing power three easy to target four growing one massive pain they must not want but desperately need what I am offering pain can be anything that frustrates people about their lives being broke is painful a bad marriage is painful waiting in line at the grocery store is painful back pain ugly smile pain overweight pain humans suffer a lot so for us entrepreneurs endless opportunity abounds the degree of pain will be proportional to the price you will be able to charge more on this in the value equation chapter when they hear the solution to their pain and inversely what their life would look like without this pain they should be drawn to your solution i have a saying that I use to train sales teams the pain is the pitch if you can articulate the pain a prospect is feeling accurately they will almost always buy what you are offering a prospect must have a painful problem for us to solve and charge money for our solution pro tip the point of good writing is for the reader to understand the point of good persuasion is for the prospect to feel understood two purchasing power a friend of mine had a very good system for helping people improve their resumes to get more job interviews he was great at it but try as he did he could not get people to pay for his services why because they were all unemployed this again may seem obvious but he thought "These people are easy to target they're in massive pain there are plenty of them and it's constantly adding new people this is a great market you just forgot a crucial point your audience needs to be able to afford the service you're charging them for make sure your targets have the money or access to the amount of money needed to buy your services at the prices you require to make it worth your time three easy to target let's say you have a perfect market but no way of finding the people who comprise it well making a grand offer will be difficult i make my life easier by looking for easy to target markets examples of this are avatars that have associations they belong to mailing lists social media groups channels they all watch etc if our potential customers are gathered together somewhere then we can market to them if searching them out however is like finding needles in a haststack then it can be very difficult to get your offer in front of any potentially interested eyes this point is tactical it is reality not theoretical for instance you may want to serve rich doctors but if your ads are being displayed to nursing students your offer will fall into fears no matter how good it is main point you want to make sure you can target your ideal audience easily clarifying point there is no issue wanting to serve rich doctors they are easy to find this is just illustrative that your promotions must be served to the right audience four growing growing markets are like a tailwind they make everything move forward faster declining markets are like headwinds they make all efforts harder this was Lloyd's example newspapers had three of four makings of a great market lots of pain purchasing power easy to target but they were shrinking fast no matter how hard he tried the entire marketplace was fighting against him business is hard enough and markets move quickly so you might as well find a good market to give you a tailwind to make the process easier making this real health wealth relationships there are three main markets that will always exist health wealth and relationships the reason that those will always exist is that there will always be tremendous pain when you lack them there's always demand for solutions to these core human pains the goal is to find a smaller subgroup within those larger buckets that is growing has the buying power and is easy to target the other three variables so if I were a relationship expert trying to find my avatar I'd rather focus on second half of life relationship coaching for old-timers than helping college students in relationships why because senior citizens who are alone are likely suffering more pain as they are near their deaths have more buying power money and are easier to find targeting lastly at the time of this writing there are more people turning 65 each year than turning 20 aka growing that is the idea think about what you are good at in regards to health wealth and relationships then think about who might value your service the most aka is in the most pain has the buying power to pay what you want money and can be found easily targeting as long as those three criteria are strong and the market isn't shrinking you'll be in good shape but how important your success is finding a quote great market versus a quote normal market versus a quote bad market the answer it actually depends let me explain order of importance three levers on success it's unlikely you're going to be in a dying market like the newspaper example it's also unlikely you're going to be selling toilet paper in CO a buying frenzy you'll likely be in a normal market and that's totally okay there is a fortune to be made within normal markets my single point here is that you can't be in a bad market or nothing will work that being said here's the simplest illustration of the order of importance between markets offers and persuasion skills starving crowd is more important than your offer strength which is more important than your persuasion skills let's say you were to rate these elements on a scale of great normal and bad you'd essentially move down the line from left to right in order of importance a quote great rating on a higher order piece overpowers anything else lower on the priority scale a quote normal rating moves the buck to the next part of the equation a quote bad stops the equation unless a great from a higher order component nullifies it here are a few examples example one even if you had a bad offer and are bad at persuasion you're going to make money if you're in a great market if you're on the corner hawking hot dogs when the bar closes up at 2 a.m with mobs of starving drunk folks you're going to sell out of your hot dogs example two most of us if you are in a normal market and have a grand slam offer you can make tons of money even if you're bad at persuasion this is most people reading this book that's why I wrote it to help you maximize your success by learning to really build a grand slam offer example three let's say you're in a normal market and have a normal offer in order to be massively successful you would have to be exceptionally good at persuasion then and only then would you succeed with your persuasive skills serving as the fulcrum for your success heck many empires have been built by exceptional persuaders it's just the hardest path to follow and requires the most effort and learning nailing your offer helps you shortcut this path to success otherwise you will just have a normal business that takes exceptional skill to be successful nothing wrong with that but probably not what you signed up for commit to the niche i have a saying when coaching entrepreneurs on picking their target market don't make me niche lap you too often a new entrepreneur half-heartedly tries one offer in one market doesn't make a million dollars then mistakenly thinks this is a bad market most time that's not actually the case they just haven't found a grand slam offer yet to apply to that market they think I'll switch from helping dentists to helping chiropractors that's it when in reality both of those are normal markets and represent billions of dollars of revenue either would work just not both you must pick one no one can serve two masters i have coined the term niche lap to remind entrepreneurs in my communities to commit once they pick all businesses and all markets have unpleasant characteristics the grass is never greener once you get to the other side if you keep hopping from niche to niche hoping that the market will solve your problems you deserve to be niche slapped you must stick with whatever you pick long enough to have trial and error you will fail in fact you will fail until you succeed but you will fail far longer if you keep changing who you market to because you must start over from the beginning each time so pick then commit riches earn the niches the other reason to commit to the niche is because of how much more you will make simply put niching down will make you far more money author note when to broaden advice for most people for most if you are under $10 million per year niching down will make you more money after that it will depend on how narrow the niche is or what is called TAM total addressable market a business can only grow to meet the total addressable market that being said for most people getting to 10 million per year is already a4% achievement only one in 250 businesses achieve this so for 99.6% 6% of readers below $10 million per year it's almost always easier to serve fewer clients more narrowly but if you want to go beyond that you may depending on the size of your TAM have to broaden your audience by going up market down market or into an adjacent market where your existing services can provide value for context many companies expanded to $30 million plus per year serving a single niche chiropractors gyms plumbers solar roofers salon owners etc if you were at $1 million or $3 million per year thinking you have capped and must expand you are wrong you just need to be better when I truly grasp how much more profit I was leaving on the table it changed my life it was what took me from doing acquisition for anyone to teaching it to a specific avatar in my instance I decided on a micro gym owner with a 100 members assigned lease at least one employee and wanted to help clients lose weight that's pretty specific compared to quote small business owners or my favorite quote anyone who will pay me which is common and I was very specific in that business gym launch we turned down and still do anyone who is not the avatar that means no personal trainers no online coaches etc could I have helped them of course I could have i mean heck the majority of our portfolio is comprised of non- gym companies but in order to maintain product focus and high converting messaging knowing exactly who the product was for was a gamecher it helped us know exactly who we were speaking to at all times and exactly whose problems we were solving but simplicity and ease may not be enough to sway you so let me illustrate why honing in on one niche will make you more money reason you can literally charge 100 times more for the exact same product dan Kennedy was the first person to illustrate this for me and I will do my best to pass on the torch to you in these pages niching product pricing example product and then price time management product price $19 time management for sales professionals price $99 time management for outbound B2B sales price $499 time management for outbound B2B power tools and gardening sales reps price $1,997 dan Kennedy taught me this and it changed my life forever let's say you sold a generic course on time management unless you were some massive time management guru with a compelling or unique story it would be unlikely it would turn into anything significant what do you think quote yet another and quote time management course is value $19 $29 sure nothing to write home about let's just say $19 for illustration sake now we shall unleash the power of niche pricing in various stages on your product so let's imagine you make the product more specific keeping the same principles and call it time management for sales professionals all of a sudden this course is for a more specific type of person we could tie their increase to even one more sale or one more deal and it would be worth more but there are a lot of sales people so this might be a $99 product neat but we can do better so let's go down another level of niching and call our product time management for B2B outbound sales reps following the same principles of specificity now we know our sales people probably have very experienced deals and commissions a single deal would easily net the salesman $500 or more so it would be easy to justify a $4.99 price tag this is already a 25x increase in price for almost an identical product i could stop here but I'm going one step further let's just niche down one last level time management for B2B outbound power tools and gardening sales reps boom think about it for a second if you were a Power Tools outbound sales rep you would think to yourself "This is made exactly for me." And would happily fork over maybe a,000 or $2,000 for a time management program that could help you achieve your goal the actual pieces of the program may be the same as the generic $19 course but since they have been applied and the sales messaging could speak so much to this avatar they will find it far more compelling and get more value from it in a real way this concept applies to anything you decide to do you want to be the guy who services this type of person or solves this type of problem and even more niched I solve this type of problem for this specific type of person in this unique counterintuitive way that reverses their deepest fear that's why a fitness program for generic weight loss might be priced only at $19 while a fitness program designed and marketed only to shift nurses might be priced at $1,997 even though the core of the program is likely similar eat less move more end result the market matters your niche matters and if you can sell the same product for 100 times the price should you i'll let you decide summary points the purpose of this chapter is to reinforce two things first don't pick bad markets normal markets are fine great markets are great second once you pick commit until you figure it out if you try 100 offers I promise you will succeed most people never try anything others fail once then give up it takes resilience to succeed stop personalizing it's not about you if your offer doesn't work it doesn't mean you suck it means your offer sucks big difference you only suck if you stop trying so try again you'll never become world class if you stop after a failed attempt if you find a crazy good market ride it and ride it hard if you pair a grand slam offer with a crazy market you'll likely never need to work again seriously so have the skill set the ability to accurately assess markets by taking into account pain money targeting and growth in your back pocket so that when lightning strikes you can make sure it strikes twice having established how to nail a market let's get back to pricing the first step to making crazy money is charging premium prices free gift number two bonus tutorial winning markets if you want to know more about how I pick markets and find niches that are profitable go to acquisition.com/training/offers then watch winning markets for a short video tutorial i've also included a free checklist to see how your market or niche measures up it's absolutely free enjoy chapter 5 pricing charge what it's worth charge as high a price as you can say out loud without cracking a smile dan Kennedy january 2019 all I could see was black my eyes felt glued shut i was awake but the fatigue in my temples felt like a 5 lb weight was duct taped to my skull dragging my eyelids back down i had to concentrate forcibly to open them the details of the dimly lit room beamed in i rolled over to the edge of the hotel room bed feeling each and every muscle on my body as my weight shifted hunched on my side I could see my clothes scattered on the floor i was so beat the night before that I didn't even remember taking them off i had just finished a 5-day gauntlet of keynote after keynote presentation two days of presentations for our highest level clients immediately followed by spending two days planning with our entire company 135 plus employees i had missed a FaceTime call from my father that day before i didn't have anything on my agenda for the morning so I quickly got up slid into a hoodie and some sweats and walked into the hallway to call him back after the initial pleasantries he immediately dove into why he was calling parental concern i saw the picture you posted of all your clients he said but in an unusually concerned tone i thought the event was for all your highest paying clients i didn't know it was a big event it looked like you had a thousand people there alone in the hallway and struggling to shake the heavy weight of exhaustion still I tried to gauge where his concern was coming from and what he was getting at i'd explained this to him already it was only for our highest level clients that wasn't all of our clients I said just the ones who pay $42,000 a year are gym lords like I told you every single person in that picture paid you $42,000 he sounded almost frightened at the idea yeah wild right my voice was worse from days of speaking and thousands of 20 second conversations is it legal what you're doing he asked wow that escalated quickly I thought to myself do they know you're paying you that much yes it's legal and of course they know it's not like I'm magically siphoning money that's a lot of money i hope what you're giving them is worth it i contemplated whether it was worth the effort to dive into this or just ignore it but knowing this was going to be a thing I took a deep breath and began to explain if I made you $239,000 extra this year would you pay me $42,000 i asked using $239,000 because it was the average increase in topline revenue of a gym using our system for 11 months for sure he said "I mean if I knew I was going to make that back but what would I have to do?" About 15 hours a week of work and how long would it take me to make the $239,000 11 months and how much of the $42,000 would I have to pay you upfront nothing just pay me as you start making money using the system i watched it click my dad got it oh he said "Well then yeah I would do it." And that's why they do it too making shitloads of money breaks people's minds it literally stretches their mind so far past what they can believe is possible they assume you're doing something wrong or illegal they literally can't even why because they think to themselves they can't be that much smarter than me or work that much harder than me so how is it possible for them to make a thousand times more than me enough money that it would literally take 10 lifetimes for me to make what they make in a year in the 3 years leading up to me writing this book I took home over $1.2 million per month in profit every single month that's more than the compensation for the CEOs of Ford McDonald's Motorola Yahoo combined every year as a kid in his 20s it angers those who believe that life isn't fair it confuses others who cannot comprehend and believe that there must have been a mistake and it inspires a select few who are bound for greatness i hope that you are in the last category because that is who I am writing this for you can do this you just need to learn how and I'm going to show you price to value discrepancy quote I hope what you're giving them is worth it end quote those words would probably sting for most but when my dad said them to me I just knew he didn't understand the value we were providing what I want to show you is how to create and communicate value aka the worthness of an offer in order to understand how to make a compelling offer you must understand value the reason people buy anything is to get a deal they believe that what they are getting value is worth more than what they are given in exchange for it price the moment the value they receive dips below what they are paying they stop buying from you this price to value discrepancy is what you need to avoid at all costs after all as Warren Buffett said price is what you pay value is what you get the simplest way to increase the gap between price to value is by lowering the price it's also most of the time the wrong decision for the business getting people to buy is not the objective of a business making money is and lowering price is a one-way road to destruction for most you can only go down to zero but you can go infinitely high in the other direction so unless you have a revolutionary way of decreasing your cost one/tenth compared to your competition don't compete on price as Dan Kennedy said there's no strategic benefit to being the second cheapest in the marketplace but there is for being the most expensive so the goal of our grand slam offer will be to get more people to say yes at a higher price by increasing our value to price discrepancy in other words we will raise our price only after we have sufficiently increased our value this way they still get a great deal think buying $100,000 worth of value for only $10,000 it's money at a discount free gift number three bonus tutorial and free downloads charge what it's worth if you want to know how I create value discrepancies for B2B or B2C products go to acquisition.com/training/offers course and then watch charge what it's worth for a short video tutorial my goal is to gain your trust and deliver value in advance as such it's absolutely free enjoy why you should charge so much it hurts most business owners are not competing on price or value in fact they're not actually competing on anything at all their pricing process typically goes something like this step one look at marketplace step two see what everyone else offers step three take the average step four go slightly below to remain quote competitive end quote step five provide what their competitors offer with a little more step six end up with a value proposition of more for less and the big secret those competitors they're copying are dead broke so why on earth copy them pricing where the market is means you're pricing for market efficiency over time in an efficient marketplace more competitors enter offering a little more for a little less until eventually no one can provide any more for any less at this point a market reaches perfect efficiency and the business owners participating make just enough at the end of the month to keep going the bottom 10 to 20% of operators get washed out or lose the will to fight then fresh business owners enter with no idea and repeat the process of their forefathers and around and around they go in plain words pricing this way means you are providing a service at just above what it costs for you to stay above water we are not trying to barely stay above water we are trying to make egregious amounts of money that will have your relatives asking if what you do is legal again we are not trying to get the most customers we are trying to make the most money that being said since there is no strategic benefit to being the second lowest priced player in your marketplace allow me to give you a brief overview of YC premium pricing as not only a very smart business decision but a moral one furthermore it's the only choice that will allow you to truly provide the most value a unique and strong position in the marketplace let me introduce you to the virtuous cycle of price i have used this framework in most of the materials I release because it needs to be consistently reinforced the forces of the marketplace will great on your belief system you must stay strong and ignore them here's the basic premise of why you need to charge a premium if you want to best serve your customers when you decrease your price you decrease your client's emotional investment since it didn't cost them much you decrease your client's perceived value of your service since it can't be that good if it's so cheap or priced the same as everyone else you decrease your client's results because they do not value service and are not invested you attract the worst clients who are never satisfied until your service is free and you destroy any margin you have left to be able to actually provide an exceptional experience hire the best people invest in your people pamper your clients invest in growth invest in more locations or more scale and everything else you had hoped in the goal of helping more people solve whatever problem it is that you solve in essence your world sucks and to make matters worse your service probably sucks because you are squeezing blood from the proverbial stone there's just not enough money left over to make something exceptional as a result you fall in line with the armies of average businesses that race to the bottom i've lived that life it's terrible if you love your customers and your employees please stop short changing them when there is a better way here's the reverse this is what happens when you raise your prices when you raise your prices you increase your client's emotional investment you increase your client's perceived value of your service you increase your client's results because they value your service and are invested you attract the best clients who are the easiest to satisfy and actually cost less to fulfill and who are most likely to actually receive and perceive the most relative value you multiply your margin because you have money to invest in systems to create efficiency smart people improve customer experience scale your business and most importantly of all to keep watching the number in your personal bank account go up month after month even with reinvesting in your business this allows you to ultimately enjoy the process for the long haul and help more people grow rather than burning out and shriveling into obscurity to swing the argument even further in favor of higher prices here are a few interesting concepts when you raise your price you increase the value the consumer receives without changing anything else about your product wait what yes higher price means higher value literally in a blind taste test researchers ask consumers to rate three wines a low price wine a medium price wine and an expensive wine throughout the study the participants rated the wines with the prices visible they rated them unsurprisingly in order of their price with the most expensive being the best the second most expensive being the second best and the third cheapest option being rated as a cheap wine what the tasters didn't know is that the researchers gave them the exact same wine all three times yet the tasters reported a wide discrepancy between the highriced wine and the cheap one this has deep implications for the direct relation between value and price in essence raising your prices can directly enhance the value you provide what's more the higher the price the more lure your product or service has people want to buy expensive things they just need a reason and the goal isn't to just be slightly above market price the goal is to be so much higher that a consumer thinks to themselves "This is so much more expensive there must be something entirely different going on here." That is how you create a category of one in this new perceived marketplace you are a monopoly and can make monopoly profits that is the point one final point I want to drive home if you offer a service where a customer must do something in order to achieve the result or solve the problem you say you solve they must be invested the more invested they are the more likely they are to achieve the positive result therefore it follows that if you care about your customers you should get them as invested as humanly possible ideally this means pricing your services or product in such a way that it stings a little when they buy that sting will force and focus their attention in their investment in your product or service those who pay the most pay the most attention and if your customers are more adherent and follow through and if they achieve better results with your service than your competition then you are in a very real way providing more value than anyone else this is how you win but I know this isn't easy and it shouldn't be your product must deliver so many wish to shortcut the real work do that and you will fail in the real world to have the quote gonads to charge big ticket prices you must outwork yourself you must be so confident in your delivery because you have done it so many times that you know that this person will succeed experience is what gives you the conviction to ask for someone's entire year salary as payment you must believe so deeply in your solution that when you look at yourself in the mirror at night alone your conviction remains unshakable so let me bring the section home with my personal experience my premium price experience in my first niche consulting business Gym Launch I teach owners a better business model before productizing my consulting services I flew out to 33 gyms in 18 months to do full gym turnarounds we would fly out fix everything in gym and relaunch it in 21 days we would average an increase in $42,000 in additional sales in 21 days it was wild my fee was 100% of the revenue I would bring in at our peak we were turning around eight gyms a month this quickly became a logistical nightmare after the wear and tear of living in motel month after month after month I thought to myself "There has to be a better way to do this." One month there was a gym we were scheduled to go fly out to but I simply didn't want to do it so I told them we were going to cancel the engagement the gym owner practically threatened me to help him so I said I would help him but he would have to do all the work but I would show him how within 30 days this gym made almost $44,000 in new upfront cash collected which was four times their previous month as soon as I saw that my process could be duplicated from afar without me having to fly people in our business exploded i had found the missing link because my travel schedule was no longer a constraint we went on to sell 4,000 plus more gyms over the next few years and counting using a done with you rather than done for you model but back to premium pricing when I entered the space low price competitors offered full service marketing solutions for $500 per month with a single highric competitor charging $5,000 for his product i wanted to be the premium price leader i wanted to be so expensive that it created a lure around what we were doing so we came in at three times the highest priced player and 32 times more than the lowest priced player a price of 16,000 for 16we done with you intensive then we upsold 35% of those people to a 3ear $42,000 per year agreement for us to help them grow their gyms for context the average gym owner makes $35,280 per year in take-home profits if that's the average it means half make even less than that so for many of them they were committing to half of their yearly salary or more to buy our program and I was selling this to grown men as a kid in his 20s telling them I was going to help them make more money this was possible because my conviction was stronger than their skepticism how based on a voluntary survey taken at our last full company event with 158 gyms responding we found that a gym launch gym who has been in our program for 11 months will experience the following average improvements topline revenue growth of $239,000 per year recurring revenue growth of $160,000 a year bottom line growth aka profit from 2943 per month to 89.40 per month that's 3.1x increase average client growth of an additional 67 clients churn aka percentage of clients who leave each month drops from 10.7% before to 6.8% retail sales an additional 4,400 per month in retail sales after they started working with us prices on average went from 129 per month to 167 per month in average revenue per gym member the survey just proved what I already knew i had complete conviction in our product i knew it worked i had outworked my self-doubt summary points what should you take from this first and foremost charge a premium it will allow you to do things no one else can to make your client successful we were able to charge a premium because we provided more value than anyone else in the industry in a real way we were charging only a fraction of what our clients made using our system this is important our clients still got a deal the gap between what they paid price and what they got value was massive as a result the virtuous cycle continued to spin we charged the most money we provided the most value our gyms remained the most competitive made the most money always had the latest and best acquisition systems and had the support to implement them at lightning speed we made many mistakes along the way but our pricing model was not one of them it allowed me the room to make big bets without losing the farm the truth is that 99% of businesses need to raise their prices to grow not lower them profit is oxygen it fuels the fire of growth you need that if you want to reach more people and make a bigger impact in order to charge so much though you must learn to create tremendous value let's head there next section three value create your offer how to make offers so good people feel stupid saying no chapter six value offer the value equation we question all of our beliefs except for the ones we really believe in and those we never think to question orson Scott Card i want to be abundantly clear the goal should be to charge as much money for your products or services as humanly possible i'm talking heinous amounts of money that being said anyone can raise their prices but only a select few can charge these rates and get people to say yes from this point forward you must abandon any notion you have about what's fair every enormous company in the world charges you money for things that cost them nothing it costs pennies for the phone company to add an additional user except they don't mind charging you hundreds of dollars per month for access it costs pennies to manufacture pharmaceutical drugs but they don't mind charging hundreds of dollars per month for it media companies charge advertisers a king's ransom for your eyeballs and it cost them next to nothing to get you to like kitten photos on social media you need to have a big discrepancy between what something costs you and what you charge for it it is the only way to become unreasonably wealthy many entrepreneurs believe that charging too much is bad the reality is yes you should never charge more than your product is worth but you should charge far more for your product and services than it costs to fulfill think up to 100 times more not just two or three times more and if you provide enough value it should always still be a steal for the prospect that is the power of value it unleashes unlimited pricing and profit power to scale your company for example one of my private clients whose company I have equity in in our portfolio is in the photography space over two years implementing the tactics outlined in this book the owner was able to increase the average ticket from $300 to $1,500 that's a 5x increase gasp even cooler they now spend less time per customer and have higher customer satisfaction the 5x increase in average ticket 38xed the profit of the business it went from making $1,000 a week in profit to $38,000 per week in profit and continues to grow as a result the company was finally able to continue to scale to multiple locations and provide meaningful work to great employees and a fun benefit we were able to donate even more money to children's charities which is something the owner and I have in common almost a million dollars at the time of this writing but none of that would have been possible without figuring out what people valued most tripling down on it and ruthlessly eliminating everything else a 5x price increase may seem crazy to you but clients voted with their dollars that what the company provides now is far better than what it did before cracking value opens up the world of unlimited profit impact and possibilities those who understand value are the ones who will be able to charge the most money for their services the good news is that there is a repeatable formula that I have created i've never seen it displayed elsewhere to help quantify the variables that create value for any offer i call it the value equation once you see it you can never unsee it it will operate in your subconscious running in the background calling out to you it's a new lens through which to see the world the value equation dream outcome times perceived likelihood of achievement divided by time delay time effort and sacrifice equals value free gift number four value equation bonus tutorial and free downloads if you want to know how I break down business's core offering into something more valuable go to acquisitions.com/trainings/offers and select the value equation video to watch your tutorial i also included a downloadable checklist my goal is to gain your trust and deliver value in advance as such it's absolutely free enjoy so as you can see or here there are four primary drivers to value two of the drivers which are the top two parts of the equation you will seek to increase the other two on the bottom of the equation you will seek to decrease so one yay the dream outcome our goal is to increase two yay perceived likelihood of achievement our goal is to increase three boo perceived time delay between start and achievement our goal is to decrease four perceived effort and sacrifice our goal is to decrease if you notice the questions in the last section that my father asked me you'll see they corresponded with these pillars what will I make dream outcome how will I know it's going to happen perceived likelihood of achievement how long will it take time delay what is expected of me effort and sacrifice get the bottom to zero in the beginning of my career I focused all my attention on dream outcomes and the perception of achievement social proof third party education etc in other words the top side of the equation that's where beginner marketers make bigger and bigger claims it's easy and it's lazy but as time has gone on I have realized these larger than life claims are the easiest to establish and therefore less unique after all anyone can make a promise the harder and more competitive are the time delay and effort and sacrifice the best companies in the world focus all their attention on the bottom side of the equation making things immediate seamless and effortless apple made the iPhone effortless compared to other phones at the time amazon made purchasing a single click of a button and made purchases arrive almost immediately maybe by the time you read this they'll be sending drones to our doors within 60 minutes netflix made consuming television immediate and effortless so the older I get the more I shifted my focus to the quote hard stuff decreasing the bottom side of the equation and I believe the better you do this the more you will be rewarded by the marketplace final note the reason this is a division equation and not addition is that I want to convey one key point if you can make the bottom part of the equation equal to zero you are golden no matter how small the top side is anything divided by 0 equals infinity which is technically undefined for math nerds in other words if you can reduce your prospect's true time delay to receiving value to zero aka you realize your immediate dream outcome and your effort and sacrifice is zero you have an infinitely valuable product if you accomplish this you win the game given this postulate a prospect would in theory purchase something from you and the moment their credit card was run it would immediately become their reality that is infinite value imagine clicking the purchase button on a weight loss product and instantly seeing your stomach turn into a six-pack or imagine hiring a marketing firm and as soon as you sign your document your phone begins to ring with new highly qualified prospects how valuable would these products or services be infinitely valuable and that's the point i don't know if we entrepreneurs will ever get there but that is the hypothetical limit we should all strive towards and why I structured the equation this way perception is reality perception is reality it's not about how much you increase your prospect's likelihood of success or decrease the time delay to achievement or decrease their effort and sacrifice that in and of itself is not valuable many times they will have no idea the grand time offer only becomes valuable once the prospect perceives the increase in likelihood of achievement perceives the decrease in time delay and perceives the decrease in effort and sacrifice a prime example of this happened on the London tunnel system the biggest increase in rider satisfaction aka value was never from faster trains to decrease weight times instead it was from a simple dotted map that showed them when the next train was coming and how long they had to wait the dotted map which only cost a few million decreased the RERS perception of time delay and sacrifice aka being bored waiting more than actually making the trains faster which cost billions of dollars to do isn't that cool this is how we need to think about our products pro tip: logical versus psychological solutions most people naturally try and solve problems using logical solutions but the logical solutions have already been tried because they're logical it's what everyone would try and do as business owners and entrepreneurs I increasingly approach problems to find psychological solutions rather than logical ones because if there were a logical solution it probably would have already been solved thereby eliminating the problem all that remains are the psychological problems example inspired by Rory Sutherland CMO of Oglev Advertising any fool can sell a product by offering it for a discount it takes great marketing to sell the same product for a premium logical solution make trains faster to increase satisfaction psychological solution decrease the pain of waiting by adding a dotted map psychological solution pay models to be the hostesses on the trip people would wish it took longer to get to their destination logical solution make elevator faster psychological solution add floor to ceiling mirrors so people are distracted staring at themselves and forget how long they were on the elevator logical solution make it cheaper psychological solution make fewer of them and raise the price which would cause more people to want it often most logical solutions have been tried and failed at this point in history we must give the psychological solutions a shot to solve problems as such as business owners it's up to us to communicate these value drivers with clarity to increase the prospect's perception of these realities the extent to which you answer these questions in the mind of your prospect will determine the value you are creating only then will we truly be able to realize the actual value of our product in the marketplace and by extension the egregious prices we wish to charge it's difficult to separate four value drivers from one another as most vehicles combine many of these elements together but I will do my best to isolate and clearly explain each one below number one dream outcome our goal increase people have deep unchanging desires this is what marriages are lost over wars are fought over and people willingly die for our goal is not to create desire our goal is simply to channel that desire through our offer and monetization vehicle the dream outcome is the expression of that feeling and experiences the prospect has envisioned in their mind it's the gap between their current reality and their dreams our goal is to accurately depict that dream back to them so they feel understood and explain how our vehicle will get them there the dream outcome is simple it's the getting there where the value gets enhanced or detracted people generally and our clients specifically want to be perceived as beautiful to be respected to be perceived as powerful to be loved to increase their status these are all powerful drivers but multiple vehicles may accomplish the same thing take the desire to be perceived as beautiful for example there are a lot of things that touch on this desire makeup anti-aging creams or serums supplements shapewear plastic surgery fitness all of these vehicles channel the desire to be perceived as beautiful and we further unpack the idea of a desire to be beautiful we see that it may be a surface level declaration of a deeper desire to achieve higher status in one social group the dream outcome value driver is most prominently used when comparing the relative value between two different desires being satisfied in general the dream outcome that most directly increases a prospect's status will be the one they value the most as such a prospect may value that entire category of vehicles that satisfy one desire more than another category that satisfies a different desire for many men making money is more important than being handsome why because money drives status for men more than being handsome does so in general they will value all offers that make them money more than offers that help them look good i once heard Russell Brunson tell a story about this concept he explained how his wife Colette at first hearing the status concept rejected it she claimed she wasn't driven by status and would never want a Lamborghini instead she favored her minivan but after talking further she revealed it was because driving a Lamborghini would decrease her status amongst her mom friends while driving a minivan would show that she was a good mom increase in status so it's not about the money it's about the status the perceived increase or decrease in relative standing when compared to others socially or professionally talk in terms of things your prospect believes will increase their status and you'll have your prospect's drooling pro tip frame benefits in terms of status gained from the viewpoint of others when writing copy you can make it that much more powerful by talking about how other people will perceive the prospect's achievement connect the dots for them example if you buy this golf club your drive will increase by 40 yards your golf buddy's jaws will drop when they see your ball soar 40 yards past theirs they will ask you what's changed only you will know that being said when comparing two products or services that satisfy the same desire the value from the dream outcomes will cancel out since they are the same it will be the other three variables that drive the difference in perceived value and ultimately price for example if we had two products or services that both help make someone beautiful it will be the likelihood of achievement time delay and effort required that will differentiate the perceived value of each offer simply put if two things make someone beautiful what makes one worth $50,000 and another worth $5 answer the extent of the other three value variables number two perceived likelihood of achievement our goal increase this was the last of the variables that I added when trying to think through this framework a few years ago i just felt like something was missing with only the other three then I realized people pay for certainty they value certainty i call this the perceived likelihood of achievement in other words how likely do I believe that it is that I will achieve the result that I'm looking for if I make this purchase for example how much would you pay to be a plastic surgeon's 10,000th patient versus their first if you're a normal sane person a lot more i mean heck you might even ask them to pay you if you're their first patient ever so you can see even from this simple example that while the service you're receiving is technically the same the only thing that changes is your perceived likelihood of getting what you want both surgeons take the same amount of time to do the surgery if anything the guy who has done it 10,000 times would likely get it done faster and still charge more the more experienced surgeon has a track record of achieving a result which incentivizes their desiraability people value this perceived like achievement increasing a prospect's conviction that your offer will actually work for them will make your offer that much more valuable even though the work remains the same on your end so to increase value with all offers we must communicate perceived likely of achievement through our messaging proof what we choose to include or exclude in our offer and our guarantees more on this later number three time delay our goal increase time delay is the time between a client buying and receiving the promised benefit the shorter the distance between when they make the purchase and when they receive value slash the outcome the more valuable your service or product is there are two elements to this driver of value long-term outcome and short-term experience many times there are short-term experiences that occur and route to the long-term outcomes they happen along the way and provide value it's good to understand both the thing people buy is the long-term value aka the dream outcome but the thing that makes them stay long enough to get it is the short-term experience these are the little milestone a prospect sees along the way that shows them they are on the right path we try and tie as many of these as possible into any service we offer we want clients to have a big emotional win early as close as possible to their purchase this gives them the emotional buyin and the momentum to see it through to their ultimate goal for example it takes a while to add an extra $239,000 per year to a gym but that's what they're buying so once they have purchased we need to create emotional wins fast one of the ways we do this is to get their ads live and get them to close their first $2,000 sale within their first 7 days by doing this their decision to work with us is reinforced and they immediately trust us more this makes them more likely to follow the rest of our systems and get to their ultimate destination pro tip fast wins always try and incorporate short-term immediate wins for a client be creative they just need to know that they're on the right path and they made the right decision trusting you in your business let me give you another example if I sell someone a bikini body their time delay to realize that outcome may be 12 months or even longer along the way though as they change their bodies they may experience higher sex drive more energy and an increased community of friends they aren't initially buying those things but those things may become short-term benefits that keep them in the game long enough to achieve their ultimate outcome they buy the dream but they stay for the benefits they discover along the way the faster and more clearly you can demonstrate those benefits the more valuable your service will be for a weight loss customer we would get them to meet someone else so they immediately had some social benefits from the program and we usually give them a more aggressive diet in the beginning why because we wanted them to have a big fast emotional win so we could get them to commit to the long term this is also backed by science people who experience a victory early on are more likely to continue with something than those who do not that being said having to wait 12 to 24 months to get you what you want is a long time when you can do lipo section and be done in an afternoon this just shows one of the reasons people pay $25,000 for a lipo suction with a tummy tuck while people will barely pay $100 a month to join a boot camp but that's not the only reason is it that leads me to the last driver of value effort and sacrifice pro tip: Fast beats free the only thing that beats free is fast people will pay for speed many companies have entered free spaces and done exceedingly well with a speed first strategy a few notable companies the MVD versus the DMV wait in line forever or pay $50 you can skip the line and get your license renewed privately fedex versus USPS when it absolutely positively has to be there overnight spotify versus slow free music uber versus walking fast beats free many will always be willing to pay price or the value of speed so if you find yourself in a market competing against free double down on speed number four effort and sacrifice our goal decrease this is what it costs people in an ancillary cost aka other costs accured along the way these can be both tangible and intangible using the fitness lipo suction example let's look at the difference in effort and sacrifice fitness effort and sacrifice wake up 1 to 2 hours earlier in the morning 5 to 10 hours per week of time lost stop eating the foods you love constant hunger physical soreness feelings of embarrassment and not knowing how to exercise risk of injury literal nausea working out meal prepping new groceries more expensive groceries new clothing fear of gaining it back after all this effort aka impermanence etc liposuction effort and sacrifice fall asleep wake up thin guaranteed be sore for 2 to 4 weeks massive difference right in fact in looking at the marketing of plastic surgeons these are the exact pain points they hit on when they say things like "Tired of wasting countless hours in the gym tired of diets that just don't work?" This is why when you sell fitness you have to spend an hour armrestsing a client to give over 1/10enth or 1/100th of the amount of money they pay for surgery there's just not a lot of perceived value because the perceived likelihood of achievement the time delay to achievement and the effort and sacrifice are so high so even though the outcome is the same the value of the vehicles are dramatically different hence the difference in price decreasing the effort and sacrifice or at least the perceived effort and sacrifice can massively boost the appeal of your offer in an ideal world a prospect would want to simply say yes and have their dream outcome happen with no more effort on their behalf this is why done for you services are almost always more expensive than do it yourself because a person doesn't have to do all the effort and sacrifice there's also a component of perceived likelihood of achievement difference as well people believe that if an expert does it then they will be more likely to achieve the outcome than if they try on their own my hope is that you now have a foundational understanding of the components of value and how the interplay between each of the components creates or detracts from the value someone might be willing to pay putting it all together as I said earlier these elements of value don't happen in a vacuum they happen together in combination so let's look at a few examples that utilize all four components of value of once in an effort to quantify the value I'll rate them on a binary scale of zero or one one being value achieved zero being missing then I will add all four together to give you a relative value rating of a type of service our goal as marketers and business owners is to increase the value of the dream outcome and its perceived likelihood of achievement while decreasing the time delay of achievement and the effort and sacrifice one has to put in to get there to start I will do a side-by-side comparison of two vehicles with identical dream outcomes meditation and Xanax both offer the buyer relaxation decrease anxiety and feelings of well-being i will demonstrate how the other three variables dramatically shift the value of delivering that dream outcome and ultimately the price meditation versus Xanax so I'm going to read the chart below to compare relative scores on each of the four value drivers meditation dream outcome relaxation decreased anxiety feelings of wellbeing score one out of one perceived likelihood of achievement low since most people get distracted and don't actually think they'll follow through with daily meditation score 0 out of 1 time delight long time to yield long-term results some immediate benefits after 10 to 20 minutes assuming you don't get frustrated score.5 out of 1 effort and sacrifice physical discomfort numb body limbs often mental discomfort feeling like you are failing constantly time sacrifice you have to set aside time every day to do this score 0 out of 1 overall value score for meditation low 1.5 out of four now let's look at Xanax dream outcome same as meditation relaxation decrease anxiety feelings of wellbeing score 1 out of one perceived likelihood of achievement high since most people are confident that if they take the pill it will make them feel more relaxed score 1 out of one time delay 15 minutes for effects to be felt score 1 out of one effort and sacrifice swallowing a pill score 1 out of one overall value score high 4 out of four and that is why Zenex is a multi-billion dollar product while I know of almost no multi-billion dollar meditation businesses value i'm not here to argue about whether meditation is better than Xanax obviously it is but that doesn't mean it's perceived as more valuable this is also the reason that supplement industry 123 billion according to Grand View Research is twice the size of the health club industry 62 billion according to Hersa they both accomplish the same perceived objectives being healthy losing weight looking good increasing energy etc but one is perceived as more valuable because it has lower costs people are more willing to pay $200 for supplements than they are for a $29 per month membership taking a pill or drinking a shake is so much faster and easier than going to the gym every day hence valued crazy world we live in and you can either sit there and make complain posts about how people ought to be a certain way or you can take advantage of the way people are and capitalize this book is for those people who want to be victors not victims of circumstance you can either be right or you can be rich this book is for getting rich if that bothers you you can put this down and go back to arguing against human nature hint you're not going to change it now that being said knowing what people value versus what is good for them is key it means you can find ways to monetize the things that people value in order to give them what they really need win-win you can make your dent in the universe while making a profit chapter 7 free goodwill he who said money can't buy happiness hasn't given enough away source unknown people who help others with zero expectation experience higher levels of fulfillment live longer and make more money i'd like to create the opportunity to deliver this value to you during your reading or listening experience in order to do so I have a simple question for you would you help someone you've never met if it didn't cost you money but you never got credit for it if so I have an ask to make on behalf of someone you do not know and likely never will they are just like you or like you were a few years ago less experienced full of desire to help the world seeking information but unsure where to look this is where you come in the only way for us at acquisition.com to accomplish our mission of helping entrepreneurs is first by reaching them and most people do in fact judge a book by its cover and its reviews if you have found this book valuable this far would you please take a brief moment right now and leave an honest review of the book and its contents it will cost you $0 and less than 60 seconds your review will help one more entrepreneur support his or her family one more employee find work they find meaningful one more client experience a transformation they otherwise would not have encountered one more life change for the better to make that happen all you have to do is and this takes less than 60 seconds leave a review if you're on Audible hit the three dots on the top right of your device click and rate and review and then leave a few sentences about the book with a star rating if for some reason they have changed the functionality you can go to the book page of Amazon or wherever you purchase this and leave a review right on the page p.s if you feel good about helping a faceless entrepreneur you are my kind of people i'm that much more excited to help you crush it in the coming chapters you'll love the tactics I'm about to go over pps life hack if you introduce something valuable to someone they associate that value with you if you'd like goodwill directly from another entrepreneur send this book their way thank you from the bottom of my heart now back to our regularly scheduled programming your biggest fan Alex chapter 8 value offer the thought process if at first you don't succeed try try again thomas H palmer Teachers Manual i want to do an exercise with you right now i want to show you the difference between convergent and divergent problem solving why so that you can actually create the grand slam offer that will become the cornerstone of your business convergent and divergent thinking in simple terms convergent problem solving is where you take lots of variables all known with unchanging conditions and converge on a singular answer think math example you have three sales people who can each take 100 calls per month it takes four calls to create one sale including no shows you need to get to 110 sales how many sales people must you hire deduced information one salesperson equals 100 calls four calls equal one close 100 calls divided by four calls per close equals 25 closes per 100 calls 25 closes per rep goal 110 sales total divided by 25 sales per rep equals 4.4 since you can't hire 4.4 reps you decide you must have five answer and since you have three you hire two more math problems are convergent there are a lot of variables and a single answer we are taught all our lives in school to think this way that's because it's easy to grade but life will pay you for your ability to solve problems using a divergent thought process in other words think of many solutions to a single problem not only that convergent answers are binary they're either right or wrong with divergent thinking you can have multiple right answers and one answer that is way more right than the others cool right here's what life presents us for divergent thinking multiple variables known and unknown dynamic conditions multiple answers as such I want to do an exercise with you right now that will engage the part of your brain that you will need to use in order to make something magical i call it the brick exercise don't worry it will take 120 seconds the brick exercise right now I want you to set a timer on your phone for 120 seconds what you need to do think of a brick write down as many different uses of a brick as you can possibly think of how many different ways could a brick be used in life to provide value ready go it's okay to write in the book or write on a notepad on the side all right stop now before I show you my list did you consider the following how big is the brick a tab of gum 3 to 5 by 8 2 1x4 standard 2 ft x two feet by six feet what's the brick made of plastic gold clay wood metal how's the bear shaped does it have holes in it does divots for interlocking now as you think about that can you think of even more uses for the brick than you probably wrote down well here's my list paperwe doorstep building things home for a fish in a fishbowl plant holder with dirt holes hold brick as a trophy painted brick rustic decoration to break a window make a mural tiny bricks painted a weight for resistance training a wedge under an uneven platform pen holder or hold brick children's toy lego bricks flotation device plastic brick payment for goods gold brick stabilizer for leaning against something retainer of value holder for flagpole old brick a seat jumbo brick every offer has building blocks the pieces that when combined make an offer irresistible our goal is to use a divergent thought process to think of as many easy ways to combine these elements to provide value so if I were selling a brick I would find out what my customer's desire was and then devise how many ways I would create value with my brick now let's do it for real chapter 9 value offer creating your grand slam offer part one problems and solutions abc easy as 1 2 3 a simple as do Michael Jackson ABC when I started my gym I struggled i wanted so deeply to be successful prove my dad wrong about my decision to start my own business and prove to myself that I was worth something but try as I did I couldn't even sell people into a $99 a month boot camp people would say LA Fitness is $29 a month this is expensive i even tried getting people to start for free they said they wouldn't bother because $99 a month afterwards was still too much and they didn't want to start something they couldn't continue with it's a new level of frustration when you can't even give your services away for free to people i felt worthless and I didn't know what to do thankfully during this time I was in groups with other gym owners and I started hearing about marketers and books i devoured everything I could and as soon as I stumbled on Dan Kennedy's books I was hooked in his books he talked about making irresistible offers again this theme of making an offer so good people would feel stupid to say no kept reappearing but this time remembering what TJ had told me I'd have decided to go all in on this concept rather than just do what everyone else was doing but how everyone else was selling $99 per month boot camps how is I going to compete so I decided to look at what we did differently i thought what do they really want no one wants membership they want to lose weight step one identify dream outcome i had heard of weight loss challenges so I started there lose 20 lbs in 6 weeks big dream outcome lose 20 pounds with a decreased time delay 6 weeks note I wasn't selling my membership anymore i wasn't selling the plane flight i was selling the solution when you are thinking about your dream outcome it has to be them arriving at their destination and what they would like to experience step two list problems next I wrote down all the things people struggled with and their limiting thoughts around them when listing out problems think about what happens immediately before and immediately after someone uses your product or service what's the next thing they need help with these are the problems think about it in insane detail if you do you will create a more valuable and compelling offer as you'll continually be answering people's next problem as they manifest so let's go ahead and list out the problems from a prospect's perspective as you think about them what points of friction exist for them i like to think about it in sequence that the customer will experience each of these obstacles again channel insane detail the more problems the better example problems list weight loss the first thing they must do buying healthy food grocery shopping problems one buying healthy food is hard confusing and I won't like it two buying healthy food will take too much time three buying healthy food is expensive four I will not be able to cook healthy food forever my family needs will get in the way if I travel I won't know what to buy next thing I must do cook healthy food one cooking healthy food is hard and confusing i won't like it and I will suck at it two cooking healthy food will take too much time three cooking healthy food is expensive it's not worth it four I will not be able to cook healthy food forever my family's needs will get in my way and if I travel I won't know how to cook healthy next thing they must do eat healthy food next thing you must do exercise regularly etc now we're going full circle here each of the above problems has four negative elements and you guessed it each align with the four value drivers as well dream outcome perceived likelihood of achievement time delay effort and sacrifice one dream outcome this will not be financially worth it two likelihood of achievement it won't work for me specifically i won't be able to stick with it external factors will get in my way this is the most unique and service specific of the problem buckets three effort and sacrifice this will be too hard confusing i won't like it i will suck at it four time this will take too much time to do i'm too busy to do this it will take too long to work it will not be convenient for me now go ahead and list out all problems your prospect has don't let these buckets which are just meant to help your brain get going constrain you if it's easier for you just list out everything you can possibly think of what I showed here isn't just four problems though we have 16 core problems with two to four sub problems underneath so 32 to 64 problems total yaoza no wonder most people don't achieve their goals do not get overwhelmed this is the best news ever the more problems you can think of the more problems you get to solve so to recap just list out each core thing that someone has to do then think of all the reasons they wouldn't be able to do it or keep doing it using the four value drivers as a guide now we go to the fun part turning problems into solutions now that we have our dream outcome and all the obstacles that will get in someone's way it's time to define our solutions and list them out creating the solutions list has two steps first we're going to transform our problems into solutions second we're going to name these solutions that's it so let's take a look at our list of problems from earlier what we're going to do is simply turn them into solutions by thinking what would I need to show someone to solve this problem then we're going to reverse each element of the obstacle into solutionoriented language this is copyrighting 101 it's beyond the scope of this book to get into but simply adding how to then reversing the problem will give most people new to this process a great place to start for our purposes we are giving ourselves a checklist of exactly what we are going to do for our prospects and what we are going to solve for them once we have our list of solutions we will operationalize how we are actually going to solve these problems aka create value in the next step and I want to be 100% clear you will solve every problem we'll explore how together in the next step problem solution problem buying healthy food grocery shopping it's hard confusing i won't like it i will suck at it becomes how to make buying healthy food easy and enjoyable so that anyone can do it especially moms buying healthy food takes too much time how to buy healthy food quickly buying healthy food is expensive how to buy healthy food for less than your current grocery bill buying healthy food is unsustainable how to make buying healthy food take less effort than buying unhealthy food buying healthy food is not my priority my family's needs will get in the way how to buy healthy food for you and your family at the same time buying healthy food is undoable if I travel I won't know what to get how to get healthy food when you are traveling problem cooking healthy food is hard confusing i won't like it and I will suck at it turns into how anyone can enjoy cooking healthy meals easily cooking healthy food will take too much time how to cook meals in under 5 minutes cooking healthy food is expensive and it's not worth it how eating healthy is actually cheaper than unhealthy food cooking healthy food is unsustainable how to make eating healthy last forever cooking healthy food is not my party my family's needs get in the way how to cook healthy food despite your family's concerns cooking healthy food is undoable if I travel I won't know how to cook healthy how to travel and still cook problem eating healthy food it's hard confusing etc how to eat delicious food without following complicated systems problem exercising regularly it's hard confusing etc easy to follow exercise system that everyone enjoys okay that was a lot of problems and a lot of intuitive solutions courtesy of divergent thinking you'll also notice that a lot of them are repetitive and that's totally normal the value drivers are the four core reasons our problems always relate to those drivers and our solutions provide the needed answer to give a prospect permission to purchase what's even crazier is that if even only one of these needs is missing in a solution it can cause someone not to buy you would be amazed at the reasons people do not buy so don't limit yourself here brooke Est is a friend of mine who runs an enormous life coaching business to give you a different take on the problem solutions list brooke sent me her list as she was going through this book to make a grand slam offer for a 90-day relationship course take a look to see this process through a totally different lens the main takeaway though don't be fancy just get all the problems down then turn them into solutions regardless of whether the offer you create is around fitness like the example a relationship course like Brooke or something wildly different like ears we now know what we need to do step four is the how and how to do it without breaking the bank free gift number five bonus tutorial offer creation part one if you want to walk through the process with me live go to acquisition.com training/offers then select offer creation part one to watch a short video tutorial with yours truly as always it's absolutely free i also have a free offer creation checklist for you that you can swipe in immediately to put in your business enjoy now I will read Brook's list that she gave and she sent to me which you probably can't see because you're listening to this dream outcome amazing loving relationship in 90 days problems: No good options no one's attractive no one's available boring no chemistry poor communication not hot enough sex isn't good no intellectual stimulation not enough effort in the relationship no time insecurity needs aren't being met too many unmet expectations acting crazy emotional relationship is dull want different things not good at relationships too much pressure moves too slow fizzles out fast sexual incompatibility solutions list how to get a list of prospective partners chosen in 90 days how to be attracted to your chosen partner how to feel available to your partner how to make sure 90 days is exciting and never boring how to create chemistry like you've never known how to communicate in sexy fun meaningful ways how to make the relationship hot by being hot how to have great sex for 90 days how to create intellectual stimulation how to put the effort in the relationship for max return how to make time for hourly dopamine love hits etc chapter 10 value offer creating your grand slam offer part two trim and stack cut cut cut friends to Rachel Green in friends i divided this chapter into two parts because it's the media section in the book it's also the most important without a valuable product or service the rest of the book won't be as actionable we just covered all the problems we're going to solve the second half of making your offer is breaking down tactically what we are going to do or provide for our client in theory we'd all love to fly out and live with our customers to fix their problems in reality that wouldn't make a very scalable solution we need our offer to be incredibly attractive and profitable that being said if this is your first grand offer it's important to overd deliver like crazy maybe flying out isn't such a bad idea in the beginning make some sales then think about how to make it easier for your clients you want them to think to themselves I get all this for only that in essence you want them to perceive tremendous value everyone buys bargains some people just buy $100,000 things for only $10,000 that's where we want to live high prices but a steal for the value like hopefully this book has been so far sales to fulfillment continuum something that is easy to sell is typically hard to fulfill most things that are hard to sell are typically easy to fulfill in order to best absorb the notions of trimming and stacking we need a mental reframe enter the sales to fulfillment continuum whenever you are building a business you have a continuum between ease of fulfillment and ease of sales if you lower what you have to do it increases how hard your product or service is to sell if you do as much as possible it makes your product or service easy to sell but hard to fulfill because there's more demand on your time investment the trick and ultimate goal is to find the sweet spot where you sell something very well that's also easy to fulfill i have lived by the mantra create flow monetize flow then add friction this means I generate demand first then with my offer I get them to say yes once I have people saying yes then and only then will I add friction in my marketing or decide to offer less for the same price practicality drives this practice if you can't get demand flowing in then you have no idea whether what you have is good i'd rather do more for every customer and have cash flow coming in then optimize my business but have zero cash flow coming in after and have zero idea about what I needed to adjust to better serve my customers here's a perfect example to drive this home when I started Gym Launch gym owners reached out asking for help they needed so much help I didn't know where to start but I wanted to make sure they got more than what they paid me so here's what I ended up doing to fill their gyms i would fly out to their gym for 21 days spend my own money on hotels car rentals eating out advertising generate the leads work the leads then sell for them i would even do the first onboarding meeting with the clients to get them started in short I did everything i took on all the risk they only had to put $500 down to reserve their date which I made refundable at the end of their launch so they had zero financial risk zero time risk zero effort and the deal was I got to keep all the upfront cash collected from selling their services and they got all the clients for free you can imagine how this was a pretty compelling offer on my own I was able to sell about $100,000 per month in cash upfront for myself so these deals were very lucrative for me over time I scaled that to a team of eight guys selling a month but this began to wear on me and the team it was at that point that I realized that if I were to simply teach them how to do what I did I would charge maybe a third of what I would normally make but I would be able to help hundreds of gyms a month instead of eight and I could do it all while sleeping in my own bed every night my promise was fundamentally the same i will fill your gym in 30 days it was simply the how and the what I did that changed the how and the what is what we are breaking apart when talking to business owners about their model I tell them to create cash flow by overd delivering like crazy at first then use the cash flow to fix your operations and make your business more efficient this revision process can be pretty seamless you may not even have to change what you offer you may just end up creating systems that create the same value for the customer but cost you significantly fewer resources ultimately this is how businesses beat one another understanding this will be important as you scale your business now that we've established the importance of the fulcrum and how to approach the sales of fulfillment balance at the outset let's cover the last two steps of creating our grand slam offer to recap quickly remember that we've covered identifying dream outcomes step one listing problems step two and determining solutions step three step four create your solutions delivery vehicle the how the next step is thinking about all the things you could do to solve each of these problems you've identified this is the most important step in the process this is what you're going to deliver this is what you're going to do or provide in exchange for money for the purposes of keeping creativity high divergent thinking think about anything you could possibly do think of all the things that might enhance the value of your offer so much so that it would be stupid to say no what could you do that someone would immediately say all that seriously yes I'm in doing this exercise will make your job of selling so much easier even if you come up with something you're not actually willing to do it's okay the goal here is to push your limits and jog your brain into thinking of a different version of the solution you'd normally default to this is where you get to flesh your entrepreneurial creativity remember you only need to do this once literally one time for a product that may last years this is high value high leverage work you ultimately get paid for thinking "You got this this should be fun go ahead and list out all your possibilities now then I'll take you through my example i'll just use the buying food problem from earlier as an example i'd like to group things by how many people I'm going to deliver this thing to at once my list is below at the bottom I've given you my quote cheat codes end quote for how to think through this to get even more creative problem: buying healthy food is hard confusing and I won't like it if I wanted to provide a one-on-one solution I might offer A an inerson grocery shopping experience where I take clients to the store and teach them how to shop b personalized grocery list where I teach them how to make their own list c full service shopping where I buy their food for them we're talking 100% done for them d inperson orientation not at the store where I teach them what to get e tech support while shopping where I help them if they get stuck f phone call while grocery shopping where I plan to call them when they go shopping to provide direction and support in real time if I wanted to provide a small group solution I might offer a in-person grocery shopping where I meet a bunch of people and take them all shopping for themselves b personalized grocery list where I teach a bunch of people how to make their weekly list and I could do this one time or every week if I wanted to c buy their food for them where I purchase their groceries and deliver them as well d inerson orientation where I teach a small group off-site what to do just not at the store if I wanted to provide a one to many solution I might offer a live grocery store tour where I might stream me going through the grocery store for all my new customers and let them ask questions live b a recorded grocery store tour where I might shop once record it and then give it as a reference point from that point onwards for my clients to watch on their own c a do-it-yourself grocery calculator where I create a sharable tool where show them how to use a tool to calculate their grocery list every week d predetermined list where each customer plan comes with its own grocery list for each week i could make this ahead of time so they have it then they could use it on their own time e grocery buddy system where I could pair each customer with another which takes no time and lets them go shopping together f pre-made Instacart grocery carts for delivery where I could pre-make Instacart list so clients could have their groceries delivered to their doorstep with one click as you see the list can really go on and on here this is just to illustrate the many ways to solve a single problem now do this for all the perceived problems that your clients encounter before after and during their experience with your product or service you should have a monster list by the end of this product delivery cheat codes what's that you're having trouble being creative i'm going to give you the cheat codes right now kind of like I did with the brick example like the brick could be gold or plastic or have holes in it or be a Lego etc here are my cheat codes for product variation and enhancement and a visual to break down the process for you for my consulting deck for my private portfolio companies delivery Cube a what level of personal attention do I want to provide one-on-one small group one to many b what level of effort is expected from them do it themselves figure out how to do it on their own or do it with them done with you you teach them how to do it or done for you done for them you do it for them c if doing something live what environment or medium do I want to deliver it in in person phone support email support text support Zoom support chat support d if doing a recording how do I want them to consume it audio visual written e how quickly do we want to reply on what days during what hours 247 9 to5 within five minutes within an hour 24 hours a day how do I want to support f 10x to one10enth test if my customers paid me 10 times my price or $100,000 what would I provide if they paid me 1/10enth of my price and I had to make my product more valuable than it already is how would I do that how could I still make them successful for onetenth the price stretch your mind in either direction and you'll come up with wildly different solutions in other words how can I actually deliver on these solutions I am claiming I will provide do this for each problem because solutions from one problem will give you ideas for others you wouldn't normally have considered remember it's important that you solve every problem i can't tell you the amount of times one single item becomes the reason someone doesn't buy anecdote: Why we must solve every perceived problem when I started selling weight loss I insisted that folks prepare all their food at home i found it too difficult to help clients lose weight when they ate out because they always blew their diets rather than solve the problem I insisted they do it my way or not at all as a result I lost many sales one month I really needed to make some sales to pay rent my next sale walked in the door it was a business exec looking to lose weight as we got into the sales presentation she told me the program wouldn't work for her because she went out to eat for lunch every day normally I would have lost the sale i was a stickler for making people not eat out but I really needed the money refusing to lose the sale because of this one thing I conceded i'll make you an eating out guide for when you go to restaurants so you can eat out 100% of the time and still hit your goal how does that sound she agreed and I closed the sale i took the time to make an eating out guide for her but from that point going forward whenever someone said "But what about eating out?" I had the solution over time I continued solving obstacles with templates and trainings until there were no more one things to prevent my sales this lesson has stuck with me to this day don't get romantic about how you want to solve the problem find a way to solve every problem a prospect presents with when you do that you make an offer that's so good people just can't say no and that's what we're building here note you must resolve every obstacle a buyer believes they will have to convert the highest amount of people that's not to say that if you don't you won't sell people not at all you just won't sell as many people as you otherwise could have and that's the goal to sell the most people for the highest possible price with the highest possible margin step five trim and stack now that we've enumerated our potential solutions we will have a gigantic list next I look at the cost of providing each of these solutions to me the business owner i remove the ones that are the highest cost and lowest value first then I remove low cost low value items if you aren't sure what's high value go through the value equation and ask yourself which of these things will this person one financially value two cause them to believe they'll be likely to succeed three make them feel like they can do it with much less effort and less sacrifice and four help them accomplish their goal and see the result they want in far less time what should remain or offer items that are one low cost high value or two high cost high value example let's say I moved in with someone and did their shopping exercising and cooking for them they would probably believe they would definitely lose weight but I am not willing to do that for any amount of money short of a gazillion dollars the next question becomes is there a lesser version of this experience that I can deliver at scale just take one step back at a time until you arrive at something that has a time commitment or cost that you are willing to live with or obviously massively increase your price so it becomes worth it for you i.e the gazillion dollars to live with someone if there's one type of delivery vehicle to focus on it's creating high value oneto many solutions these will be the ones that typically have the biggest discrepancy between cost and value for example before I started my gym I had an online training business i created a small Excel sheet application that after inputting all of someone's goals automatically generated 100 meals perfectly suited to their macronutrient calorie needs better yet depending on which meals they selected it would tell them what they needed to buy at the grocery store in exact amounts and how to prepare them in bulk for the exact amounts it took me about 100 hours to put together this entire thing but from that point going forward I sold truly personalized eating plans for very expensive prices but they only took me about 15 minutes to make high value low cost these types of solutions require a high one-time cost of creation but infinitely low additional effort thereafter fyi this is exactly why software becomes so valuable that doesn't mean you don't want to ever do something in a small group or one-on-one model after all I do oneonone with all my portfolio company CEOs that we help scale past 30 million plus you just want to make sure that you save those high cost items for big value ads only if you think you can accomplish the same value with a lower cost alternative then do that instead when I was running my gym I went through this exact exercise and created bulking blueprints an eating out system a travel eating and workout guide meal plans for every body weight and gender a grocery list calculator plateau busting meal plans for when they got stuck fast cooking guides partnered with a meal prep service and did inerson nutrition orientation with every client oneonone many of the one to many solutions require more work upfront but once created they become valuable assets that create value in perpetuity it's worth putting in the time to create these because they will create high margin profit for years to come real talk the meal plans I made for my gym have been used by 4,000 plus gyms now and literally hundreds of thousands of people they are simple and easy to follow so they've provided ample return for the week or two of dedicated time I spent making them and if you ever have the desire to build a repeatable business model something that scales these assets you create will become the bedrock this book for example is a high value asset that is low cost overall sure it cost me a lot up front but each additional book I sell after my first one cost me very little and provides tremendous value the final highv value deliverable let's sum this up before we configure our final highv value deliverable step one we figured out our prospective client's dream outcome step two we listed out all the obstacles they're likely to encounter on the way aka our opportunities for value creation step three we listed out all those obstacles as solutions step four we figured out all the different ways we could deliver those solutions step 5 A we trim those ways down to only the things that were the highest value and lowest cost to us all we have to do now is step 5 B put all the bundles together into the ultimate highv value deliverable so let's go back to the example we see our prospects struggled with the following buying food how anyone can buy food fast easy cheaply which we turn into foolproof bargain grocery system that'll save hundreds of dollars per month on your food and take less time than your current shopping routine $1,000 of value for the money it'll save you from this point on in your life a one-on-one nutrition orientation while I explain how to use b recorded grocery store c do-it-yourself grocery calculator d each plan comes with its own list for the week e bargain grocery shopping training f grocery buddy system g pre-made Instacart grocery carts for delivery h and a check-in via text weekly cooking to solve this problem ready in five minute busy parent cooking guide how anyone can eat healthy even if they have no time $600 value from getting 200 hours per year back that's four weeks of work a 101 nutrition orientation where I explain how to use B meal prep instructions c do it yourself meal prep calculator d each plan comes with its own meal prep instructions for the week e meal prep buddy system f healthy snacks in under five minutes guide g a weekly post they can tag me in for feedback to solve the eating problem personalized lick your fingers good meal plan so good it'll be easier to follow than eating what you used to cheat with and cost less $500 value a one-on-one nutrition orientation where I explain how to use b personalized meal plan c 5minute morning shake guide d 5minute budget lunches e 5minute budget dinners f familyized meals g a daily picture of their meals h oneonone feedback meeting to make adjustments to their plan which FYI was an upsell exercise problem fat burning workouts proven to burn more fat than doing it alone adjusted to your needs so you never go too fast plateau or risk injury $699 value to solve the traveling problem the ultimate tone up while you travel eating and workout blueprint for getting amazing workouts in with no equipment so you don't feel guilty enjoying yourself $199 value how to actually stick with it the never fall off accountability system the unbeatable system that works without your permission it's even gotten people who hate coming to the gym to look forward to showing up thousand value how to be social the Live It Up While Slimming Down eating out system that will give you the freedom to eat out and live life without feeling like the odd men out $349 value total value $4,351 all for only $599 off most of our facilities now sell this bundle for longer periods of time for $2,400 to $5200 wild as we got better at creating and monetizing value the prices and profit of our facility skyrocket once you start this value creation process each additional piece of value you create stacks up over time this is why it's important to begin can you see how much more valuable this is than a gym membership the bundle does three core things one it solves all the perceived problems not just some two gives you the conviction that what you're selling is one of a kind very important three makes it impossible to compare or confuse your business or offering with the one down the street we finally have what we are going to deliver in all its glory that being said it's unlikely we present it this way depending on whether we sell 101 or one to many we would present this differently i will address how to present each of these bundled items in the bonus section which is the next section summary points we went through this entire process to accomplish one objective to create a valuable offer that is differentiated and unable to be compared to anything else in the marketplace we are selling something unique as such we are no longer bound by the normal pricing forces of commoditization prospects will now only make a valuebased rather than a pricebased decision on how they should buy from us harrah now that we have our core offer the next session will be dedicated to enhancing it we will employ a combination of psychological levers bonuses urgency scarcity guarantees and naming free gift number six bonus tutorial offer creation part two if you want to walk through this profit maximizing trimming and stacking process with me live go to acquisition.com/training/offers i also have some free checklists for you that you can use as always it's absolutely free section four enhancing your offer scarcity urgency bonuses guarantees and naming but wait there's more if you order today every infomercial in the '90s May 2019 Arnold Schwarzenegger's home after school allstars fundraiser the line of cars outside Arnold's house was around the corner and we were in one of them we were sitting in our Uber when a security guard with an earpiece black suit and black sunglasses knocked on the driver's window it was like straight out of a movie the driver rolled down the window name: Alex and Leila he scanned the list on his clipboard nodded then checked off our names "great," he said his demeanor transformed from stern to inviting "welcome to the fundraiser stay in this line you'll make a left then security will escort you the rest of the way." The security guard talked into his walkie-talkie to the next post down the road signaling our car was approved pulling in front of the estate was like entering a Bond movie lamborghinis Bugattis Ferraris and brands of cars that are too expensive to even speak of old guys with young skinily clad girls a-list actors celebrities with millions of followers were recording themselves as they arrived talking to their iPhones to their audiences and us the fundraiser was 25,000 per ticket to attend with an invite list of only 100 there was a red carpet and all every year the fundraiser culminated in a big auction for memorabilia and items some of the business owners in the audience gave away for charity we walked around looking at the entertainment stations purposely devised to get donors in the giving mood we saw $10,000 scotches $500 cigars pre-released items from major brands that wouldn't be available to the public until months later and of course the most expensive cuisine you could imagine leila and I were just soaking it all in it was a wonderful night we definitely felt like cool kids ben the CEO of the charity saw us looking lost and walked over he took me by the arm and introduced me to some of the other donors these were all men who were older than me donating $100,000 and up without a second thought the man he introduced me to was one of the charity's biggest donors he had built an ultra high-end jewelry and watch business i'm talking 100,000 500 $2 million plus rare status symbols that people buy only so other 0001enters know they belong he had donated upwards of 700,000 in merchandise as prizes for the fundraiser that evening alex and Ila meet George ben said he's been very generous with his time and money to the cause george this is Alex and Ila they're donating a million dollars tonight to After School Allstars i figured you are both good people and wanted to connect you two nice to meet you George said with calm and weathered eyes he was in his late 60s tall and sturdily built he could hear his Eastern block origins in his accent he sounded like a man who had fought tooth and nail to be here but had softened his demeanor for a gathering such as these but the tiger with the teeth and claws remained under the surface ready to be called upon at a moment's notice i felt like I understood this guy ben broke the ice so George was the one who got me to raise the price from 15,000 per ticket to $25,000 we had more demand than ever this year but I took his advice i cut the amount of tickets we sold and raised the prices that's right George said content that his stage business advice had been followed when demand increases cut supply he perked up slightly cuz we started talking about money this man had built his business from nothing and had found ways to sell things for extraordinary profits by understanding human psychology i had long learned about supply and demand but this guy was using its psychological underpinnings to fuel a fundraising you could take the tiger out of the jungle but not the jungle out of the tiger people want what they can't have people want what other people want people want things only a select few have access to he was dead right they had raised an extra $1 million that night before the event had even started by cutting the supply of tickets and raising the prices on top of that all the people were more qualified than ever to be big donors the night ended being at the most successful night in the charity's history raising nearly $5.4 million from only a hundred people that's $5,400 ahead each of the items was auctioned off as a one-of-a-kind item and if you missed it you'd never have a chance to buy it again arnold even threw in some bonuses when two people would get high enough in the bidding allowing the charity to get both donations it was a masterful display of human psychology at work in a setting where people knowingly overpaid for products the products remained unchanged yet within the setting an item that wouldn't sell at a different venue for $10,000 sold for $100,000 that's how powerful scarcity urgency and bonuses are and breaking down how to use them to further increase demand for your offer without changing your offer is the purpose of this section author note other persuasion powers at play scarcity urgency bonuses and guarantees were not the only persuasion tools being employed to get egregious prices at the fundraiser they also use commitment and consistency status peer pressure goodwill celebrity endorsements competition etc however scarcity urgency bonuses and guarantees are the four that I'll be breaking down in this book as I believe they're the ones that belong with the offer and less with the actual selling which I will talk about more in depth in acquisition volume 4 $100 million sales the delicate dance of desire pictured in the book is a supply and demand curve fundamentally all marketing exists to influence the supply and demand curve we artificially increase the demand for our products and services through some sort of persuasive communication when we increase the demand we can sell more units when we decrease the supply we can sell those units for more money the perfect profit combination is lots of demand and very little supply or perceived supply the process of enhancing your offer is designed to do both of these things increase demand and decrease perceived supply so you can sell the same products for more money than you otherwise could and in higher volumes than you otherwise would over a long enough time horizon the new supply demand curve pictured in the book is the curve that has been shifted to the right by bonuses scarcity urgency guarantees and naming so that you can get more units sold at higher prices author note this assumes a regular business who is not trying to gain mass market penetration for some other strategic advantage desire comes from not getting what you want in fact I heard this quote that I love from Naval Rabicon desire is a contract you make with yourself to be unhappy until you get what you want it follows therefore that we only want things we do not have as soon as we have them our desire for them disappears therefore if we seek to increase the demand or desire we must decrease or delay satisfying the desires of our prospect we must sell fewer units than we otherwise can let that sit with you for a second consider this example we promote some 2-day workshop that is upcoming first we whisper that it's coming then we tease it with some benefits then we shout that it's launching in a week then when we launch this amazing workshop we have two supply demand scenarios scenario one we sell 10 units at $500 each sell the entire pyramid of demand at a price that everyone says yes to scenario two we sell two 1-day workshops oneonone for $5,000 each we skim the top of that pyramid with 80% of people not being able to purchase or choosing not to it's worth noting that each of these prospects have different buying thresholds in my experience demand for services is nonlinear instead I found demand to be fractal aka 80/20 in other words one of the prospects are willing to pay five times the price or more in the example I might have 10 people willing to pay $500 but two of them willing to pay $5,000 so it would make more have lower costs aka more profits provide more value and increase the demand in the remaining prospect base by selling fewer units think about how exclusive scenario one versus scenario 2 would feel think about all the people who would want to purchase but would not be able to would this increase or decrease their desire it would increase it of course on top of that if people see that others who are able to get in are loving it it would further increase their desire and the next time they would act with more urgency and be willing to pay more for the same thing than they originally did so now in the aftermath of our second scenario we would still have eight people who have unsatisfied desire this increases their desire further and to boot we now have new prospects who weren't in the original pool who now want what we have the next time we promote scenario 2 we then open up three spots at the same price and sell them all still leaving some prospects with pent-up demand this is a continuous theme conversely if we were to promote scenario one again the $500 price point we would probably sell fewer spots the second time around why we have no pence of demand all desire has been fulfilled when you quote pull the trigger too early each successive instance we promote we sell even fewer eventually we run out of sufficient demand to even make a single sale this is the sad state many businesses find themselves in always trying to generate more demand to make another quick sale for Mosaw the longer you delay the ask the bigger the ask you can make the longer the runway the bigger the plane that can take off we must endeavor to keep our supply and satisfaction of desire under the demand that we are able to generate this maximizes profits and keeps desire ravenous in our customer base this is the real key to never going hungry summary points the reason I titled this subsection delicate dance of desire is that supply and demand are inversely correlated in theory if you satisfy zero desire aka provide zero supply you will not make money and eventually people will leave feeling rejected note it takes much longer than you think conversely if you satisfy all the demand you will kill your golden goose and not know where your next meal will come from mastering supply and demand comes in the elegant dance between the two if you sleep with your significant other every day they have less desire than if you haven't slept with them for a week we want the ravenous prospect not merely the aroused therefore understanding the interplay between these variables is key to enhancing the offer and the amount of profits you will make over time up to this point we have covered all the things inside of your offer that can make it immune to price comparison and transform regular services and products into things that people will find a way to pay for it would follow that the next variable that can make your offer more desirable is how it is presented in other words the outside variables that position the product in your prospect's mind these forces are often more powerful than your core offer in the next section enhancing your offer I will show you how I one use scarcity to decrease supply to raise prices and indirectly increase demand through perceived exclusiveness two use urgency to increase demand by decreasing the action threshold of a prospect three use bonuses to increase demand and increase perceived exclusivity four use guarantees to increase demand by reversing risk five use name to restimulate demand and expand awareness of my offer to my target audience i will define each then give you examples on how to use them we will use all of these variables to enhance our offer and shift the demand curve in our favor leaving our customers always wanting for more we will start by tactically stimulating fear of missing out aka FOMO through scarcity chapter 11 enhancing the offer scarcity sold out scarcity is one of the most powerful and least understood forces to unlock unlimited pricing power if you want to learn how to sell air for millions of dollars then pay attention the reason for an authority like a doctor a celebrity like Oprah or a celebrity authority like Dr oz or Dr phil can charge egregious rates is because of implied demand people assume that there's a lot of demand for their time and therefore not a big supply of it as a result it must be expensive that being said it's hard for most businesses to understand what it's really like to have an uneven supply demand curve until you've experienced it i'm going to try and walk you through what it felt like for me for the first time I experienced it in order to give you a taste of the power when I got in this world of acquisition I saw mentors of mine selling days of time for $50,000 plus my mind was blown for two reasons first because I didn't understand how they could make so much money for a single day second because I didn't understand who in the right mind was buying it over time I learned i'll start with the buyer if I have a rare problem and I must solve this problem for my own pursuit of happiness it will consume all of my attention by the nature of my problem being specialized there will be very few people who can solve it this means there is not a large supply of solvers in many cases I will perceive only one possible solver aka supply equals 1 beyond that if solving this problem speeds up my achievement of a goal by a year or two or immediately results in me making hundreds of thousands of dollars or millions of dollars that solution becomes far more valuable does it not of course it does and so it would follow if I can pay someone $50,000 for a day of their time and see an increase of $500,000 per month in revenue within 3 months because of the insights and strategies revealed that would be a hell of a return on investment right so there are two components to value here first how rare the sources are second the actual value being provided the value and rarity compound to create some truly breathtaking profits specialized consultants are paid millions of dollars to solve problems worth tens of millions to clients the client pays for all the experience and expertise the expert has and avoids the cost of errors time and money in short they skip the bad stuff and go straight to the good stuff more quickly and for less money than it will cost to figure it out on their own a beautiful economic exchange i personally experienced this for the first time when I had two different people offer me $50,000 for a day of my time after speaking at an event they were scaling an education business in a niche not too dissimilar from my own and could not get past the million dollar per month mark as someone who was doing 1 million per week in the same business type at the time I was a very specific type of person with the cues to their problem so what happened you ask drum roll i didn't accept the offers why because I was making more than 50,000 a day in profit in my business and didn't want the distraction author note it was years later that I started acquisition.com to help these very people but instead of charging a day rate I simply became an equity holder in the company to completely align interest for short and long-term and so I could see the implementations through and as my time is limited by the laws of physics for everyone else below the $3 to $10 million per year mark I make all these materials for free after the event concluded and I was speaking with Ila I realized how I had somehow become one of those people I had always wondered about it was very surreal for me i finally understood how premium prices were truly made simple supply and demand there's little that substitutes for incredible demand you can try and fake it but there's a special type of zero given vibe that's hard to replicate when you truly don't need a person's money or even want it that's how these guys can charge so much because they don't need it the person who needs the exchange less always has the upper hand i always try to remember that it's one of the negotiating and pricing principles that has best served me in my life but Alex how are you going to show me how to use scarcity to increase the amount of people want to buy my offer when currently no one does great question let's attack some real world in the trenches strategies to reliably create scarcity creating scarcity when there's a fixed supply or quantity of products or services that are available for purchase it creates scarcity or a fear of missing out it increases the need to take action and by extension purchase your offer this is where you publicly share that you were only giving away x amount of products or can only take Y new clients for example if a musician drops a limited edition hoodie and says he only made a hundred and they will never be made again are you more or less likely to buy it than one that is always available more likely naturally the idea that you can never get it again makes it more desirable this is an example of scarcity it is the fear of missing out on something it pulls in our psychological fear of loss and gets us to take action humans are far more motivated to take action to hoard a scarce resource than they are to act on something that could help them fear of loss is stronger than desire for gain we will wield the psychological lever to get your clients to buy in a frenzy all at once until you are sold out three types of scarcity one limited supply of seats or slots in general or over x period of time two limited supply of bonuses three never available again but how do you use this properly without being phony i'll try and give you some real world examples physical products having limited releases is a tried and true method of using psychological bias to your advantage you can have limited releases for flavors colors designs sizes etc this month you're releasing 100 boxes of mint chocolate cookie flavored protein bars important point to properly utilize this method you should always sell out here's why it's better to sell out consistently than over order and fail at creating that scarcity this method stacks in effectiveness if it is done repeatedly over time just not too often once a month seems to be the sweet spot for most of the companies that I know who do this with regularity second important note when using this tactic you must also let everyone know that you are sold out that is part of what makes it work so well this way even people who are on the fence when they see that it was sold out give them social proof that other people thought it was worth it and now that the choice has been made for them they desire it more because there's no way they can get it so the next time you make the offer they will be far more likely to take you up on it fun fact Chanel a brand that has maintained insane margins and pricing for over a century is a master of scarcity they send only one to two of each piece to each store so every store has a different selection and every item is the last or second to last item in stock this allows them to price far above market and turn buying impulses into purchases services with services especially if you want to consistently get customers it can be a little trickier to use scarcity but I will show a few very simple ways to employ scarcity ethically to increase your take on offers these all have similar elements with very slight tweaks i'm enumerating these because one of these might mentally fit your business model more than others number one total business cap only accepting X clients only accepting exclients at this level of service ongoing this puts a cap on how many clients you service but also keeps them in you create a waiting list for new prospects the moment your door opens they jump right in and price resistance disappears periodically you can increase capacity by 10 to 20% then cap again this works well for your highest tiers or service levels a this is like saying "My agency only will service 25 customers total period." Over time you can increase your prices and squeeze the lower performing accounts out and bring in new more profitable accounts or you can periodically open up slots as your capacity allows always leaving some demand unmet two growth rate cap only accepting X clients per week ongoing we only accept five new clients per week we already have the first three spots taken i have six more calls this week so you can either take the spot or one of my next calls can and you can wait until we reopen i have used this method since the beginning of my business i always knew what my capacity per week was and simply chose to let our prospects know how many openings we had left this banks on the fact that you can only handle a certain amount of new customers anyways on a regular basis so you might as well let them know three cohort cap only accepting X clients per class or cohort similar to the above except done on whatever cadence you desire only accepting X clients amounts per class or per cohort over a given period is another way of thinking about it imagine you only start clients monthly or quarterly this helps you get some cadences in place in your business operationally while also allowing your sales team some legitimate scarcity example we take on 100 clients four times a year we open the doors then close them etc pro tip provide limited access for higher ticket services these scarcity tactics work especially well for higher ticket upselles if you want to create one-off workshops trainings events seminars consulting etc these are the things that by their nature take time and provide more access pairing them with the clear scarcity or fixed amounts seats or spots will rapidly drive up demand but always remember have less bots available than you think you can sell so that when you want to do it again in the future everyone will remember you sold out fast this is a compounding strategy that increases in effectiveness over time one of the few in the marketing arsenal let me give you a real world example of scarcity to enhance the value of a free lead magnet if I were to tell you right now that I have a checklist that you can download for free that has all these materials for you in this book in bulleted format you might be inclined to put this book down and go there to download it now but if I told you I have it set so that every week the page only allows 20 new people to download it you'd be far more likely to go and see if you can grab it and even more so if when you try you see that it has already run out for the week result you join a list that notifies you the next time 20 or more checklists become available for download what happens next when you get that notification you'll hit the link on your phone and you'll go to the page because you don't want to miss out again by employing scarcity we make what would otherwise be a need-free download into a desirable thing that not everyone has access to you also by extension would be far more likely to consume it when you do get your hands on it all because of how we controlled supply cool right honest scarcity the most ethical scarcity the easiest scarcity strategy is honesty wait what let me explain i'm sure right now you probably couldn't handle a thousand clients tomorrow right but how many could you handle 5 10 25 well you might as well define a number that you're willing to take on in a given period of time and then advertise it simply letting people know that you are three-folds the way to capacity this week will move people over the edge to buying from you or letting people know that you're 81% to capacity in your total business will make more people likely to sign up with you quote before they lose the chance scarcity also implies within it social proof if you are 81% to capacity then a decent amount of people made the decision to work with you and the closer you get to your arbitrary fullness the faster the spots will disappear but only you get to draw where that line is quote full neat right summary points employ one or multiple methods of scarcity in your business you will drive a faster purchasing decision from your prospects and at higher prices just let them know your limits and let psychology do the rest now that we've covered some of my favorite scarcity tactics that you can use year round what else do you do to increase demand without changing anything about your offer increase urgency we will cover that next pro tip extreme scarcity if you don't hate money sell a very limited supply of one-on-one access you can do that via any of the mediums described in the delivery cube direct message access email access phone access voice memo access Zoom access etc there are lots of ways you can do this but I promise you this if you want to immediately make a lot of money create a very exclusive service level based on access to you that you cap at a tiny number price it very high then tell people you will make more money than you thought possible these also tend to be some of the best clients and limit your delivery to something that you don't hate for me I hate emails and messages but don't mind Zoom calls make it work for your working style the cream of the crop the 1% of the 1% will adjust and take action pro tip once you're out you can never come back you can create scarcity by also capping your service level and saying that if they leave they can never return this type of scarcity makes people think extra hard about leaving i started doing this with my gyms early on then I was in a mastermind that employed this then I started using it in my highest level at gym lords this works best with small groups like the above example as groups become much bigger the tactic loses some of its teeth speaking from experience chapter 12 enhancing the offer urgency deadlines drive decisions scarcity is a function of quantity urgency is a function of time this is where you only limit when people can sign up rather than how many having a defined deadline or cutoff for purchase or action to occur creates urgency frequently scarcity and urgency are used together but I will separate them out for you to illustrate the concepts i'm going to show you four of my favorite ways of using urgency on a consistent basis ethically one rolling cohorts two rolling seasonal urgency and three promotional or pricing urgency four exploding opportunity they will employ urgency in your business without being phony my favorite way of doing this is having cohorts of clients start on a regular cadence this has the added operational benefit of helping you create a choreographed onboarding experience for new clients as you scale this will become increasingly important number one cohort-based rolling urgency for example if you start clients every week even in unlimited amounts you can say "If you sign up today I can get you in with our next group that kicks off on Monday otherwise you'll have to wait until our next kickoff date." If you wanted to juice it up a little bit you could say "I actually had a client who signed up a few weeks ago drop out so I have an opening for our next cohort that kicks off on Monday." If you're pretty sure you're going to do this sooner or later might as well get on it now so you can start reaping the benefits sooner rather than paying the same and waiting those few tweaks above have pushed so many sales over the edge by just reminding a potential customer that if they sign up they will be starting on Monday and if they do not they will have to wait a week it's small things like this that nudge people to take the action that they know they should already take anyways obviously the less frequently you kick off new customers the more powerful this is for example if you only start clients two times a year people will be very inclined to sign up especially as the date approaches even starting new clients every other week can confer this urgency nudge what if I lose sales by turning business away just like guarantees there's always a fear that you will make less money by employing the strategy we are afraid that we will lose sales that we would otherwise have made every experienced marketer on the planet will tell you it is a fear and it is unfounded the biggest sales on a week long campaign or launch happen in the last 4 hours of the last day up to 50 to 60% that means that the last 3% of the time allotted creates 50 to 60% of the sales that's completely illogical but also unmistakably human so just like a guarantee you will make more money from the many people who decided to take action than people who already missed out because in reality those people were never going to buy heck they didn't even buy when they had their feet to the fire so why would they buy now good to remember what to do if you just started a cohort and someone wants to buy you have two options one you can offer them a speedy personalized onboarding to get them up to speed as a bonus for signing up today and still get them in or my preference you can explain to them that since the next group starts in a little they will have the advantage of having more time to review the materials talk to their employees for a B2B product for example or families for a B2C product on top of that they can have a more extended payment plan that you can only make available to them since the start date is so far out an advantage that most clients do not get in the end remember you always have the advantage because you are the one who calls the shots two rolling seasonal urgency in a digital setting having actual signup date countdown is very useful but make sure they are real if they aren't you'll lose credibility and just look like every other wannabe marketer this is very common with internet businesses that use launch models i personally love having the dates that I'm running a promotion throughout my landing pages and in my copy i want it to be visible everywhere the nice thing is that you can always fire up another ad campaign and a new landing page with new dates and be right as rain you will see your conversions go up through the roof and it takes maybe 5 minutes of editing well worth the time investment example our New Year promotion ends January 30th next month our Valentine's Day lover promotion ends February 30th next month our sexy by spring special ends March 31st next month our Fools in Love April promo ends April 30th the actual promotion may be the same but naming it something different by season gives you the real differentiator that gives you a start and a finish deadlines drive decisions by simply having these you can point to them and let human beings push themselves over the edge so as not to miss out pro tip for local businesses this is my number one strategy for local businesses they must vary their marketing more frequently than national advertisers putting a new rapper with a date on the same core service gives you urgency and novelty that will consistently outperform the same old campaigns three pricing or bonus-based urgency this is another way of creating urgency using your actual offer or promotion/pricing structure as the thing they could miss out on kind of brilliant it allows businesses that sell clients year round to still use urgency for example yes let's get you started today so you can take advantage of the discount you came in for i'm not sure how long we'll be running it as we change them every 4 weeks or so and this is one of the better ones we've run in a while this creates some fear of missing out on the promotion or discount or bonuses rather than your actual service it would be a lie to say that if you own a roofing business you won't service them if they buy after the date but if you talk specifically about the promotion you can often elicit the same urgency on buying the prospect while maintaining your integrity win-win you can interchange a pricing promotion discount or added bonuses like free install or free onboarding or an extra workshop valued at $1,000 if they buy now these are all things you can swap around your core offer to create urgency pro tip: clean your pipeline with every price change if you ever really are planning on raising your prices hopefully soon if you're reading this book right now then you can always clean out your pipeline by letting people know the price is going up so get in now never raise your prices without letting people know it shows a position of strength and will give you a nice little influx of cash from the people in the pipeline who are on the fence four exploding opportunity on occasion you'll be exposing the prospect to an arbitrage opportunity the opportunity itself has a ticking time clock as all great opportunities do every second someone delays they miss out on disproportionate gains example if I were explaining an arbitrage opportunity between buying products on eBay and selling them on Amazon this market efficiency would correct itself over time the sooner someone acts the better it will be for them this could be true for selling someone on the opportunity of trading cryptocurrencies buying a stock getting into a new platform to advertise before competitors jump on the bandwagon or anything else like that highly competitive job environments often get job offers that are exploding offers every day they wait to take the job their pay or bonuses decrease this forces prospects to make fast decisions rather than try and wait it out to see if they get a better offer all of these examples show opportunities that decay with time so if you find yourself in front of an opportunity like this make sure to emphasize it summary points adding a deadline and incorporating one or multiple forms of urgency will get more people to take action than otherwise i have employed all four of these methods with great effectiveness i suggest you do the same next up bonuses free gift number seven bonus tutorial how to ethically use scarcity and urgency if you want to walk through some live ethical examples of scarcity and urgency with me go to acquisition.com/training/offers and select scarcity and urgency to watch a short video tutorial you'll also be able to grab my scarcity and urgency checklist that I use when creating offers as always it's absolutely free enjoy chapter 13 enhancing the offer bonuses it's all gravy baby play on an old English saying i have to give a special thanks to Jason Flatland for my renewed appreciation for bonuses they are so powerful that they earned an entire chapter in this chapter I'm going to cover what to offer how to pick them how to value them how to present them and how to price them the main point I want you to take away from this is that a single offer is less valuable than the same offer broken into its component parts and stacked as bonuses aka the entirety of the offer we came up with at the end of the last section this section is about how to present those pieces in what order for example I may in fact do lots of things with my service but until I enumerate them they are unknown this is why every infomercial of all time continues with "But wait there's more." They would not use these techniques unless they were effective as every second of airtime costs money and must be justified with ROI you'll also notice that if you watch those old infomercials they would sell one knife for $38.95 and then include 37 other knives sharpeners pans and guarantees to beat the prospect into submission they establish the price and then they expand upon it until you feel like it's such a good deal it would be stupid to mess it up the reason this works is that we are increasing the prospect's price to value discrepancy by increasing the value delivered instead of cutting the price we anchor the price we tell them to the core offer then with each increasingly valuable bonus that discrepancy grows wider and wider until it's too big to bear and we snap the rubber band in their mind that is holding their wallet in their pocket we are now going to present that stack of deliverables that we assembled earlier in a way that makes them irresistible pro tip: Add bonuses instead of discounting whenever possible on core offers whenever trying to close a deal never discount the main offer it teaches your customers that your prices are negotiable which is terrible adding bonuses to increase value to close the deal is far superior to cutting prices it puts you in a position of strength and goodwill rather than weakness presenting bonuses 101 versus group selling there are key differences between pitching to a group versus a single person group selling is beyond the scope of this book but I want to at least address when a bonus would be brought up in a one-on-one selling scenario when selling 101 you ask for the sale first before offering the bonuses if they say yes then after they have signed up you let them know the additional bonuses they're going to get this creates a wow experience and reinforces their decision to buy on the other hand if the person does not buy after the first ask then you present a bonus that matches their perceived obstacle then ask again don't feel weird about asking again you simply agree with the prospect add the bonus and then ask if this consolation was fair enough people have a hard time rejecting reciprocity so adding a bonus to accommodate then another then another and people feel almost obligated to buy from you if you recall from our trim D chapter each of those deliverables is now being weaponized and presented at the perfect time we're going to provide all these bonuses to them anyways but it increases the perception of our offer value by laying these bonuses one at a time bonus bullets that being said there are a few key things to remember when offering bonuses one always offer them you can use the bulleted bundle we come up with at the end of section 3 two give them a special name that has a benefit in the title three tell them A how it relates to their issue b what it is C how you discovered it or what you had to do to create it d how it will specifically improve their lives or make their experience faster easier or less effort and sacrifice just looking at the value equation four provide some proof this can be a stat a past client or personal experience to prove that this thing is valuable five paint a vivid mental image of what their life will be like assuming they have already used it and are experiencing the benefits six always ascribe a price tag to them and justify it seven tools and checklists are better than additional trainings as the effort and time are lower with the former so the value is higher the value equation still re supreme eight they should each address a specific concern or obstacle in the prospect's mind about why they can't or won't be successful the bonus should prove their belief incorrect nine this can also be what they would logically realize they would need next you want to solve their next problem before they even encounter it 10 the value of the bonuses should eclipse the value of the core offer psychologically as you continue to add offers it continues to expand the price to value discrepancy it also subconsciously communicates that the core offer must be valuable because if these are the bonuses the main thing has to be more valuable than the bonuses right no but you can use the psychological bias to make your offer seem wildly compelling 11 you can further enhance the value of your bonuses by adding scarcity and urgency to the bonuses themselves which takes this technique and puts it on steroids a bonuses with scarcity version one only people who sign up for my XYZ program will have access to my bonus one 123 that are never for sale or available anywhere else other than through this program version two I have three tickets left to my $5,000 virtual event if you buy this program you can get one of those last three tickets as a bonus b bonuses with urgency version one if you buy today I will add in XYZ bonus that normally cost $1,000 for free and I'll do that because I want to reward action takers c with hope you can see the subtle differences the first two examples aren't constrained by time they state that if you buy the program you will get the things you normally would not be able to the bonus with urgency is about them buying today and if they do not buy today they will lose the bonuses minor difference but worth noting advanced level bonuses other people's products and services you can get other businesses to give you their services and products as a part of your bonuses in exchange for exposure to your clients for free this is free marketing for them and highv value products for you at no cost businesses will do this because you're going to give their business exposure for free to the highest quality prospects your customers as long as they are not direct competitors you can get some brownie points secure some future referral IUs and make your offer more valuable at the same time if you secure enough of these relationships you can literally justify your entire price in the savings and additional true-to-pric bonuses for example if I owned a pain clinic I might get a massage therapist to give me one to two free massages to incorporate into my offer on top of that I might get one a chiropractor to give me two free adjustments valued at $100 a low inflammation food company to give me discounts for their products $50 savings discounts for braces and orthotics $150 of savings a local health club down the streets give me personal training session for free and a free month membership to their pool $100 value discounts on all pharmaceutical drugs from the local pharmacist $100 per month in savings repeat the above from multiple service providers so perhaps I get 10 chiropractors to give me a free adjustment now I have 10 adjustments in my bundle etc now if my offer were $400 then the value of these free bonuses alone is worth more than $400 as if that weren't already awesome enough if you really want to be a Jedi negotiate a group discount and a commission for yourself this is exactly what we did with our supplement company our gym owner clients who use our sister company Prestige Labs sponsored athletes get 30% discount on all our products and on top of that the sponsored athlete gets 40% of all sales netted after the applied discount so it's a win-win for everyone their clients get it for 30% less than our main site they get paid for giving away exclusive discounts and we get customers in exchange for commission paid everyone wins if you're following along each of these bonuses can become revenue streams for you indirectly by getting clients to say yes more easily and directly because you can negotiate that each of these businesses can pay you for the people you send their way so let's say we negotiated the following affiliate commission for making an introduction to these businesses the chiropractor gives you $100 per person who comes into their office the food company gives you free food orthotics company gives you $100 per person referred the health club gives you a free membership or $50 per month who signs up pharmacy gives you $100 per person now let's look at how much money we made our $400 offer now has the possibility to make us an extra $350 of pure profit that's the beauty of these relationships the other businesses will pay you and you don't have to do anything but refer customers to them that you already have spent the money to acquire and if you really want to get crazy come up with a grand slam offer with these partners' businesses by using the same concepts in this book so that each of the bonuses themselves become even more valuable than a simple commoditized service free gift number eight bonus on bonuses there are a million in one ways to use bonuses in your offers you can get people to act faster you can price anchor and product anchor little known you can get more people to say yes than you otherwise would and if you want a live deep dive with me you can go to acquisition.com/training/offers and select bonus creation to watch a short video tutorial i also have a free bonus checklist that I use when creating offers so you can swipe it and use it for your business on the house summary we want to employ bonuses because they expand the price to value discrepancy and get people to purchase who otherwise wouldn't they massively increase the prospect's perception of the value of our offer so here's what to do one create checklists tools swipe files scripts templates and anything else that would take lots of time and effort to create on one's own but is easy to use once created anything that you can invest in one time that clearly costs time or money to create but can be given away endless time is a perfect fit for bonuses two beyond that make a habit to record every workshop every webinar every event every interview and use them as additional bonuses as needed to crush a perceived obstacle three proactively negotiate group discounts and a referral commission with adjacent businesses that solve needs your customer will have as a result of beginning this process with you what's the next natural thing they might want go to those businesses get a deal for them they could never get for themselves because you are negotiating with the purchasing power of all your customers at once very powerful author note the longer you are in business the more of these bonus assets you will have at your disposal all these things are valuable put them in a vault and keep them in your back pocket to sprinkle into an offer to get the deal closed information products work very well here because they have high perceived value low cost and zero operational effort besides an additional login tickets to virtual experience or events work too sam goes for a higher level of service that has a fixed cost like giving someone a VIP service for a month which also by the way doubles as a way of upselling them into that level of service to keep them on it more on that in book two what should be a bonus versus part of the core offer if I am the one fulfilling it short answer wow factor in other words something you wouldn't want someone to miss many times you have so much cool stuff they will be writing your customers which is a good thing that valuable nuggets can get lost in the mix you want to take the most distinct ones that can almost stand on their own and pull those out to highlight them this is especially true for things that are short in length but high in quality or value checklists or infographics can condense a lot of information into a small space someone might not feel justified paying lots of money for a product launch map for example but as a bonus would be perceived as very valuable next up we have our core offer we are presenting it in a way to increase scarcity urgency to increase the likelihood that they want it even more we stack the bonuses of our offer to make the price to value discrepancy out of this world and break our prospects minds next on our magical journey we'll be addressing the big elf in the room risk we will completely obliterate it using a combination of guarantees so they have no reason not to buy chapter 14 enhancing the offer guarantees you're going to like the way you look i guarantee it men's warehouse ad that ran forever guarantees worth their weight in gold the single greatest objection for any product or service being sold is drum roll risk risk that it doesn't do what it's supposed to do for them therefore reversing risk is an immediate way to make any offer more attractive you will want to spend a disproportionate amount of time figuring out how you want to reverse it that being said how much more attractive can a guarantee make an offer jason Flatland who I referenced earlier once stated that he had seen the conversion on an offer 2 to 4x simply by changing the quality of the guarantee it's that important from an overarching perspective there are four types of guarantees: unconditional conditional anti-garanty and implied guarantees you must always hit your guarantee hard even if you don't have one say it boldly and give the reason why but won't people take advantage of a crazy guarantee sometimes but not usually that being said you must understand the math if you close 130% as many people and your refund percentage doubles from 5% to 10% you've still made 1.23x the money or 23% more and that all goes to the bottom line example 100 sales with five refunds which is 5% equals 95 net sales the guarantee offer might get 130 sales 13 refunds which would be 10% and net 117 sales so 117 over 95 is 1.23x or a 23% increase don't be emotional just do the math for a guarantee to not be worth it the increase in sales would have to be 100% offset by people who refund so an absolute increase in sales of 5% would need to be offset by an absolute increase in refunds of 5% but that would be a doubling of refunds which is unlikely so for the most part the stronger the guarantee the higher the net increase in total purchases even if the refund rate increases alongside it warning while guarantees can be effective sellers people who buy because of guarantees can become very shitty customers a person who only buys because of a guarantee is a person who may not be willing to put in the work necessary to see success with your product or service in a world where you want to reverse risk and get customers the best outcome tying your guarantee to the things they need to do to be successful can help all parties pro tip: high cost services warning if you have a tremendous amount of cost associated with your product or service you will likely want to employ a conditional guarantee or anti-garantee as you'll have to eat the cost of the refund and the cost of fulfilling types of guarantees if you don't achieve X in Y time we will what makes a guarantee have power is a conditional statement if you do not get X result in Y period of time we will Z to give a guarantee teeth you have to decide what you'll do if they don't get the result without the or what portion of the guarantee it sounds weak and diluted note this is what most marketers do bad example we will get you 20 clients guaranteed better example you will get 20 clients in your first 30 days or we will give your money back plus your advertising dollars you spent with us this is a simple but strong guarantee here are the four types of guarantees i'll go over them in theory and we'll apply them one unconditional guarantees as I stated earlier there are unconditional conditional and anti-garantees unconditional are the strongest guarantees they're basically a trial where they pay first and see if they like it this gets a lot more people to buy but you will have some people refund especially as consumer culture continues to shift towards entitlement and zero accountability two conditional guarantees conditional guarantees include terms and conditions to the guarantee these are the ones that you can get very creative on in general you want these to be quote better than money back guarantees because if they're going to make an investment you want to match their investment psychologically with an equal or higher perceived commitment these also can have a very powerful effect on getting clients if you know the key action someone must take in order to be successful make those part of the conditional guarantee in a perfect world 100% of your customers would qualify for a conditional guarantee but will have achieved their result and therefore would not want to take it that is an ideal we can all aspire towards and just FYI if given the option of getting a refund or getting the outcome they were promised the vast majority of people will take the outcome that's why they bought it in the first place three anti-garantees anti-garantees are when you explicitly state all sales are final you will want to own this position you must come up with a creative quote reason why the sales are final typically you want to show a massive exposure or vulnerability on your part that a consumer could immediately understand and think "Yes that makes sense." These types of guarantees are especially important with items that are consumable or massively diminish in value once given four implied guarantees implied guarantees are any offer that is a performance-based offer this comes in many different forms rev share profit share triggers ratchets monetary bonuses etc are all examples the endall concept is the same if I don't perform I don't get paid unique to this particular structure is it also confers the upside of if I do a great job I will be very well compensated these only work in situations where you have transparency for measuring the outcome and trust or control that you will get compensated when you perform stacking guarantees an experienced salesman understands that like bonuses you can actually stack guarantees for example you could give an unconditional 30-day no questions asked guarantee then on top of that give a conditional triple your money back 90-day guarantee that would be an example of stacking unconditional with a conditional guarantee you can also stack two conditional guarantees around different or sequential outcomes for example you'll make $10,000 by 60 days $30,000 by 90 days as long as you do thing 1 2 and three this future bases the prospect into an outcome they now believe is far more likely since you will be deliberately spelling it out in a conditional guarantee with a timeline for achievement doing this shows the prospect you are serious about getting the result and convinced they will achieve what they want this shifts the burden of risk back from them onto us a very powerful strategy let's go through some different guarantee examples these are some of my favorites guarantee if you don't achieve X and Y time we will insert offer unconditional no questions asked guarantee what the client gets a a full refund b 50% refund c refund of ad spend or any ancillary cost d you pay for a competitor's program e you return their money plus any additional money on top of it like an extra thousand my take this is about as simple as it gets it's also very risky you put yourself in a situation where if someone does not achieve the results whether because of your fault or not you will still be held accountable obviously this is a strong but unoriginal guarantee you can add conditions but the more conditions you add the faster this guarantee loses teeth wording i heard Jason Flinlin who I referenced earlier pitch his unconditional guarantee on a webinar and I thought it was unbelievable these are 100% his words and not my own i take no credit for this but have included it for completeness i'm not asking you to decide yes or no today i'm asking you to make a fully informed decision that is all the only way you can make a fully informed decision is on the inside not the outside so you get on the inside and see if everything we say on this webinar is true and valuable to you then if it is that's when you decide to keep it if it's not for you no hard feelings you will then after signing up at XYZ URL be able to make a fully informed decision that this isn't for you but you can't make the decision right now for the same reason you don't buy a house without first looking at the inside of it and know this whether it's 29 minutes or 29 days from now if you ain't happy I ain't happy for any reason whatsoever if you want your money back you can get it because I only want to keep your money if you're happy all you have to do is go to support xyz.com and tell us "Give me your money." And you got it and in short order our response times to any support requests average 61 minutes over a 24/7 time period you can only make such a guarantee when you're confident that what you have is the real deal and I'm fairly confident when you sign up at URL you're going to get exactly what you need to benefit right insert dream outcome pretty crazy guarantee pro tip: name your guarantee something cool if you're going to give a guarantee spice it up instead of using satisfaction or some other vanilla word describe it more strongly generic example bad 30-day money back satisfaction guarantee creative imagery example one good in 30 days if you wouldn't jump into sharkinfested waters to get our product back we return every dollar you paid creative imagery example number two great you'll get our infamous Club a baby seal guarantee after 30 days of using our services if you wouldn't club a baby seal to stay on as a customer you don't have to pay a penny unconditional satisfaction based refund guarantee expanded on from above what the client gets if at any time they're not satisfied with the level of service they're receiving from you they can request a refund at any time for the program my take believe it or not this was my guarantee when I sold weight loss programs beside being an irresistible offer I guarantee satisfaction i use the strength of my guarantee to close a lot of deals do you think I'd still be in business if I gave a crazy guarantee like that and wasn't good at what I did now I'm not guaranteeing you're going to hit this goal in 6 weeks after all because I can't eat the food for you but I am guaranteeing that you will get $500 worth of value and the service from us to support you if you don't feel like we gave you that level of service I'll write you a check the day you tell me we suck it works perfectly with a best case worst case close best case you get the body of your dreams and we give you all your money towards staying with us to hit your long-term goal worst case you tell me I suck I write you a check and you get 6 weeks of free training both options are risk- free but the only thing guaranteed not to help you is walking out of here today if you're good at what you do you can use a guarantee like this to push a lot of people over the edge that line that I just said made me a lot of money i had two people take me up on that refund out of 4,000 sales in three and a half years it's worth it satisfaction/ no questions asked is the highest form of guarantee it means we could do everything right and you can still ask for your money back as long as you know the math you will typically make up for the refunds in spades with higher and faster closing on the sales side but you have to be good at fulfilling on your promises if not steer clear i believe this offer works much better in lower ticket situations it becomes very risky as you go into higher ticket services with higher cost of fulfillment pro tip: unconditional versus conditional based on business type bigger broader guarantees work better with lower ticket B TOC businesses many people just won't bother taking the time the higher the ticket the more businessoriented it is the more you will want to steer towards specific guarantees that may or may not include refunds and may or may not have conditions conditional outsized refund guarantee what the client gets double or triple their money back or a no strings attached payment of XXX or another amount that's far more than what they paid my take this is for when you sell something with high margins and this is a guarantee to add with a consumption condition that means that they must do a variety of things to qualify for this guarantee jason Vladley who I mentioned earlier did 27 million in a day recently used an amazing guarantee for a course you sold he said "If you buy this course and spend X on advertising in your e-commerce store using the methods here in don't make money I will buy your store from you for $25,000 no questions asked." He claimed that an additional $3 million in sales came from this crazy guarantee on a $2997 course what's more he only gave 10 of those $25,000 refunds out so the refund generated 2.75 million in extra sales that's what a crazy guarantee does for you in general a very strong guarantee like this will definitely drive more sales this really serves the purpose when you need a lot of stuff to be done by your prospect and assuming those things are done there's a low chance of the result not being achieved sometimes a guarantee like this can actually get clients better results on top this guarantee will typically outperform a traditional 30-day money back guarantee in terms of net conversions sales minus refunds conditional service guarantee what the client gets you keep working for them free of charge until X is achieved my take this is probably my personal favorite guarantee of all time it essentially guarantees that they will achieve their goal but it eliminates the element of time you are never at risk for losing the money the guarantee is around the outcome to add further flavor to it you can make this guarantee conditional on them doing key actions linked with the success setting up a web page attending calls showing up to workouts weighing in reporting data etc real talk since I've been advising businesses to use this particular guarantee I have yet to have a single person say a client took them up on it realistically if someone actually does everything you ask them to do and doesn't achieve the result by the time you said one of two things usually happens one seeing your client's commitment you happily keep working with them until they achieve the desired result two it gets dropped your client is very likely close to the goal which means they're satisfied also it's likely the sales conversation with the guarantee was months earlier what may have been important in the sales conversation is a distant memory now replaced by their affection towards you and your business conditional modified service guarantee what the client gets you give them another Y long period of service or access to your product or services free of charge generally Y should give them at least twice the duration my take this is like the service guarantee but it ties a specific duration to your extended work or involvement so instead of being on the hook forever you're only on the hook for the additional Y period of time i've seen it work magically and keep the business on the hook for a finite period of time which may be an easier place for you to start before doing an all-out service guarantee like the above conditional credit based guarantee what the client gets you give them back what they paid but in a credit towards any service you offer my take this is best used during an upsell process to seal the deal on a service they are unsure they will like they already like what they have and you are trying to sell them on more of that worst case they can apply to the thing they already like so it maintains goodwill with the customer conditional personal service guarantee what the client gets you personally work with them oneonone free of charge until they reach X objective or result my take this is absolutely one of the strongest guarantees in existence it's like a service guarantee on crack you will definitely want to add conditions to this for example they must respond back in 24 hours they must use the products you tell them to they must XYZ only if they do that will you keep working with them one-on-one this is especially powerful as you scale and become more edified as a business owner can you imagine for a moment if one of my sales people said "Alex will personally work with you until your offer converts." Right it would work it would also be a nightmare so I would probably put contingencies like "Provided you've already spent $10,000 on your existing offer using our offer structure the offer you ran was for lead generation and it was a free offer." These are things that would make it unlikely to not succeed if for some reason they hadn't with those stipulations in place I could probably fix the problem in 10 minutes just looking at it conditional hotel plus airfare perks guarantee what the client gets if you don't receive value we will reimburse your product and your hotel and airfare my take this is technically a refund of ancillary cost from our first example i just love it a lot for workshops and inerson experiences normally the event would cost more than the hotel and airfare so it's like adding an extra thousand to a guarantee but way more tangible it's original enough that people like it conditional wage payment guarantees what the client gets you offer to pay their hourly rate whatever that may be if they don't find your call or session with them valuable my take this is also an ancillary cost guarantee just a very original one if someone ever actually asks for the wage payment just ask them for their tax return and divide it by 1,960 aka the number of working hours at 40 hours a week per year but no one asking for a refund will actually do that so you never actually have to give out one of these refunds like ever kind of cool conditional release of service guarantee what the client gets you let them out of their contract free of charge my take this voids a commitment or cancellation fee if you have a business that has enforceable commitments contracts or clauses this can be a powerful guarantee better yet if you're in a business that does not enforce your contracts then you have nothing to lose by adding this guarantee conditional delayed second payment guarantee what the client gets you won't bill them again until after they make or get their first outcome example lose your first 5 lbs make your first sale get to your website live etc my take I like this a lot especially if you have a very systematized process for getting the first result it gets the prospect thinking in fact action terms and gets them moving it will also focus your team on activating your client this is a great one when you know what metric or action drives activation aka a predicting indicator of long-term retention of a client i've successfully used this guarantee loads of times conditional first outcome guarantee what the client gets you continue to pay their ancillary cost ad spend hotel etc until they reach their first outcome example example if you don't make your first sale in 14 days we will pay for your admin so you do my take just like the delayed second payment just center it around a different cost i personally like this setup a lot it keeps everyone focused on getting that first dollar over the bridge once that one comes across the second comes soon after anti-g guarantee all sales are final what the client gets access to super exclusive very valuable service or product likely this is a very powerful thing that once seen cannot be unseen or once used cannot be taken away example a line of code to improve your checkout experience on a website once someone received the code they could try and use it without paying you or a series of opening messages for picking up girls or opening sentences for messaging cold prospects these are things that are very valuable but incredibly easy to steal after they've been seen or understood my take this can enhance the persuasiveness of a sale and the value of the product or service it essentially implies that the client is going to use it and see an immense benefit thereby exposing the business to vulnerability it acts as a damaging admission we have an all sales or final policy but that is because our product is so exclusive and so powerful that once it's used it cannot be unused since it is so standard to have some sort of guarantee not having one is also attentionworthy so instead of being wishy-washy lean into the fact that this thing works so well and is so easy to copy you must make all sales final they'll believe you even more if you take this position we're going to show you our proprietary process that we are using right now to generate leads in our business our funnels ads metrics etc we're going to be exposing the inner workings of our business and as a result all sales are final note strong reason why is needed here just make one up that sounds compelling the more you can show real exposure the more effective this will be anti-g guarantees can also work very well with high ticket products and services that require a lot of work or customization if you're the type of customer who needs a guarantee before taking a jump then you're not the type of person we want to work with we want motivated self-starters who can follow instructions and not looking for a way out before they even begin if you're not serious don't buy it but if you are boy are you going to make a killing from these examples you should get the idea implied guarantees performance models revshares and profit sharing performance a only pay me xxx per sale or y per sh or xx per pound lost rev share a 10% of topline revenue 20% profit share 25% of revenue growth from baseline profit share x% of profit y% of gross profit ratchets 10% if over x 20% if over y 30% if over z bonuses and triggers I get x when y occurs what the client gets if you do not perform they do not have to pay if you perform your compensation has been determined based on an agreement decided on before you begin working my take performance revshare and profit share aren't guarantees per se but for all intents and purposes is they are this is an implied guarantee whenever you enter a rev share or performance partnership if you don't make money you don't have to pay me in my opinion this is one of if not the most desirable setups first because it makes you accountable to your client's results second it weeds out low performers perfect alignment between client and service provider fosters collaboration and a long-term relationship i'm a big fan the drawbacks are tracking and collection so if you can find a way around that you've hit a gold mine this is a part of the offer we teach our agencies who use our software we help them switch from retainer model to a performance model and wrap that into a grand slam offer the one I walked through earlier i've seen countless agencies go from 20k a month to 200k a month in a matter of a few months using this guarantee you can also pair a rev share or performance setup with a minimum it would be like saying we get the greater of $1,000 or 10% of revenue generated so if the client doesn't generate money because of whatever reason this at least covers your cost of services etc or saying we get $1,000 for the first 3 months then after that it switches to 100% performance this would be the ideal setup if it takes a long time to get going these types of offers work well when you have quantifiable outcomes the stronger of course is no payment without performance create your own winning guarantee reversing risk is the number one way to increase conversion of an offer experienced marketers spend as much time crafting their guarantees as the deliverables themselves it's that important i have personally used all the guarantees listed above except for the hotel and phone call one which I just liked and saw but you can come up with your own the key is to identify a client's biggest fear pain and perceived obstacle what do they not want to have happen if they pay you what are they most afraid of reverse their fears into a guarantee think of time emotion outside cost associated with any program the more specific and creative the guarantee is the better that being said guarantees are enhancers they can enhance the magnetism or attraction of any offer but they cannot make a business if a guarantee is used to cover up a poor sales team or poor product it will backfire to lots of refunds no bueno my advice start selling service-based guarantees or setting up some sort of performance partnerships this will make all sales final so you have no fear from refunds and most importantly it will commit you to your customers results and keep you honest from there either keep that guarantee in scale which is perfectly fine or move up the food chain to less restrictive guarantees to increase volume we now have a core offer built and guarantees chosen next up now all we have to do is put a bow in this puppy and actually name it naming an offer correctly determines how well your advertising converts how big of a response you get from outbound emails cold calls and text and how many inbound responses you get from organic comments it matters that being said I will show you how to generate unlimited names or wrapping paper for your offer that way it never fatigues no matter how small your market may be this is the key to evergreen lead generation free gift number nine create a winning guarantee with me guarantees can make or break businesses they are like dynamite they can be incredibly powerful if in the hands of an expert if you want go to acquisition.com/raining/offers and select creating guarantees to watch a short video tutorial so you can start using this in your business to make more sales ASAP i also made a free guarantee checklist for you to use it's absolutely free you can go grab it um lots of love see you in the next chapter chapter 14 enhancing the offer naming implicit egotism effect we are generally drawn to the things and people that most resemble us magic headline formula like the tree that falls in the forest that no one hears having a grand slam offer will not make you money if no one finds out about it the goal must mean that upon hearing about your offer your ideal prospects are interested enough to take action naming it properly is an integral part of this process here's an example say you see a free 6E stress release challenge and a float take center session while they may be the same thing just named differently you're much more likely to respond to the first now here's the rub overtime offers fatigue and in local markets they fatigue even faster why in a local market it costs relatively little to reach an entire population on most platforms you can reach a,000 people for about $20 so if there are 200,000 people in your addressable area then it would only cost you $10,000 to reach all of them one time important disclaimer reaching an audience one time in no way means an offer is fatigued most people don't even notice an offer the first mention that's why you need to create new creative videos and images and new hooks stories and copy around the same offers you can still use offers for a long time but when we're talking about years of use not months offers can eventually fatigue over time you can rename the offer to refresh it this one concept will get you leads forever i mean it so pay attention we are not changing the actual offer we are only changing the wrapping paper if you've put together a bundled offering you're still ultimately going to be doing the same things the work you do the services you provide and the products you offer will remain unchanged as the name shifts again we're simply changing the rapper here's the simplest formula I've come up with for this process magic headline formula m A G IC m for magnet A for avatar G for goal I for interval C for container important not all these components are mandatory you will typically use three to five of them in naming a program or service if you can fit them all in great but it's likely the name will become too long the shorter and punchier the better so it's a balance between brevity and specificity the only way to really know what works is to write the names out and test them let's run through the components now author note marketing theory if you like understanding the concepts behind my chosen magic or magic formula each roughly translates to attention for magnet discrimination for avatar purpose for goal timeline for interval and method for container let's start with M make a magic reason why we start the name with a word or phrase that tells people the reason why we are running this promotion i like to tell people to think like a fraternity party planner when I was in college we had a party once because a guy got his wisdom teeth removed i say this to say the reason why can literally be anything it really doesn't matter so long as you believe it and you can even make a joke of it like the fraternity example but this should answer one or both of the following questions why are they making this great offer or why should I respond to this offer what's in it for me examples: free 88% off giveaway spring summer back to school grand opening new management new building anniversary Halloween New Year note I will discuss how to monetize free and discount offers in volume 3 money models but having a promotion or discount gives a good and strong reason why you can also site the season or an occurrence that will also give you a strong reason why for the promotion announce your avatar this component calls out your ideal avatar who you are looking for and who you are not looking for as a client you want to be as specific as possible but no more when in a local area the more local you can make the headline the more it will convert so don't do a city try and go to the subm market or hyper local area not Baltimore but Talson Maryland not Chicago but Hinsdale etc examples: BK dentists Rolling Hill moms brick-and-mortar businesses salon owners retired athletes Brooklyn busy executives etc give them a goal g this is where you articulate your prospect's dream outcome it can be a single word or phrase it can be an event a feeling an experience or an outcome anything that would excite them the more specific and tangible the better examples: pain-free celebrity smile first place never out of breath perfect product grand slam offer little black dress double your profit first client high ticket 7 figure 100K etc i indicate a time interval you're just letting people know the duration to expect here this gives an example of how long your results will take to achieve note if you're making any sort of quantifiable claim like income or weight loss most platforms will not approve this type of messaging with a stated duration to achievement because it implies a guarantee it implies they're going to get this outcome in a period of time which goes against many platform rules so don't give a quantifiable outcome with the duration unless the platform allows it that being said a duration is a powerful component of a grand slam offer and you should definitely use it anywhere you don't need to deal with compliance alternatively if the goal you help them with is not a claim per se then absolutely use a time interval $10,000 in 10 days versus make your first sale in 10 days examples: AA minutes BB hours CC days DD weeks Z months 4 hour 21 day 6 week 2 minute 3 month etc c complete with a container word the container word denotes that this offer is a bundle of lots of things put together it's a system it's something that can't be held up to a commoditized alternative examples: challenge blueprint boot camp intensive incubator masterclass program detox experience summit accelerator fasttrack shortcut sprint launch slingshot catapult explosion system getaway meetup transformation mastermind game plan deep dive workshop comeback rebirth attack assault reset solution hack cheat code liftoff etc pro tip find time to rhyme good rhymes stick in people's minds rhyme your program name to win the game google rhyming dictionary for an easy shortcut note don't try and force it it's not a requirement it's just a nice to have example six-pack fasttrack 5-day book print sprint marriage thrive deep dive 12-week two-put shortcut 12-month no debt reset celebrity butt shortcut get some ass master class just thought it was funny etc you get the idea next pro tip alliteration alliteration is where you make all or most of the words start with the same letter or sound an alternative approach to rhyming is to use alliteration when you're naming your program this is easier for most people than rhyming again you don't need to rhyme oriterate don't force it but if you can I think it sounds better example make money master class change your life challenge big booty boot camp debt detox real estate reset life coach liftoff etc i might be weird but naming offers is one of my favorite parts of this process what I want to highlight yet again is that your actual money model pricing and services will remain largely unchanged changing the rapper simply means changing the exterior perception of what your grand offer is below you'll find a few examples of named offers for different industries wellness free 6E Lean by Halloween challenge 88% off 12week bikini blueprint free 21-day mommy makeover 60-minute make your friends jealous model hair system 6 week stress release challenge free bend over back painf free in 42 days healing fasttrack doctors $2,000 off celebrity smile likeway moms $1,500 off your kids braces like way moms 12 months to a perfect smile $1,000 off for 15 families back to school free braces giveaway grand opening free x-ray and treatment instant relief back sore no more 90-day day rapid healing intensive 81% off tightness $1 massage new client summer special coaching five clients in 5 days blueprint 7 agency 12week intensive 14-day find your perfect product launch fill your gym in 30 days free I could keep listing these but hopefully you get the idea now it's time for you to give it a try for your grand slam offer again you don't necessarily have to use all the power components of the headline using three to five will typically create something that is more unique and desirable allowing you to separate yourself from the competitive field and create an offer that will get clicks and engagement and ultimately make you money furthermore you don't need to do in the magic order do what sounds punch you to you after doing this for a while you'll see that some offers convert better than others that's natural and every once in a while you'll get a name that takes off like a rocket i honestly have no idea why some names win and others do not so don't be emotional about it keep trying keep striking out then try more you'll get there now that you have several working names for your offer you can use two or three of your best names in your advertising campaign quickly note the winner then use that as a control to test against with new names that is how you promote pro tip: name sub items and bonuses use the magic headline formula for each item in your stack and bundle it will automatically enhance the value of your offering simply by naming it in a way that resonates with your prospects what happens when offers fatigue as you market offers you will need to create variations over time as the taste of the market change over time here's the order in which you will change things to keep lead flow consistent first change the creative the images and pictures in your ads next after that doesn't work change the body copy of your ads itself if that doesn't work change the headline or the rapper of your offer so free 6 week lean down challenge turns into free 6 week tone challenge or holiday hangover to new year new you if that doesn't work change the duration of your offer if that doesn't work change the enhancer of your offer your free or discount component six if that doesn't work change the entire monetization structure the series of offers you get prospects and the price points associated with them that is much more covered in book two and three i follow this variation framework because most of the time it's the first handful of items that need to be changed typically they need to be changed again and again without touching anything on the bottom of the list for example when ads fit we don't change our entire business we run the same ad again with a different video or image once that stops working we change it again eventually you need to change the words on your ads and repeat the process then and only then would you change the rapper so let's say we change from a 6 week stress release challenge to a 42-day relaxing holidays challenge for a massage center same core offer just a different rapper then of course you can change the duration of your offer 6 week to 28 days or 8 weeks etc the lower on the list you go the more operationally heavy it is so be really sure you've exhausted the earlier quote lighter ways of varying the offer once you've monetized the offer rarely should you change it just rinse and repeat over and over again this can be hard because we are entrepreneurs and we love change change here usually just creates inefficiency and operational drag costing you money no bueno so use your entrepreneurial AD on the rapper first the look and feel of the offer copy creative headlines then change the seasonality of the offer then change the duration if you're stuck change what you're giving away for free or discounted change the entire machine behind it only as a last resort and for darn good reason especially once you get traction but how do you get initial traction good question try the offer structure and headline you think has the highest likelihood of working then stick with it and if it doesn't convert at first don't worry you'll get better often times if you're using these types of models many of them will work in that case stick with the one that gives you the highest return you can also rotate between offers if it doesn't create lots of operational drag for your business this is the ultimate position of power you have multiple aces in the hole that you can play at any time which keeps your marketing converting at an even higher level author note marketing for local businesses ironically local business marketing is both easier and harder than national level marketing it's easier to get to work but harder to keep working or scale and the reason is in local markets it's easier because there's trust in the familiar so selling in person at higher prices in a local market is inherently easier it means you will convert a much higher percentage of your leads this makes marketing work most of the time the downside of local marketing is that offers fatigue rapidly because there's only a limited radius that a local business can serve to reference an earlier concept the TAM total adjusted market for a brick and mortar is only its immediate radius most times so by extension the smaller radius the faster the offer fatigues this is a double-edged sword of local learning to rapidly vary my offers headlines and creative when I had my local businesses was a cornerstone skill that made my expansion to a national level advertising much easier for me so if you are in a local market just remember you aren't going to change the value stack of your offer you're just going to change the way it looks to the marketplace in your marketing naming summary we must appropriately name our offer to attract the right avatar to our business true to the moniker people do judge a book by its cover halfass naming your product or offering can ruin its conversions don't fall victim to lazy naming follow the steps here to name your product or service offering and watch the same offer get two times three times or 10 times the response rate you'll believe it when you see it i know I did enhancing your offer section recap congrats you figured out how to make your offer valuable how to break your services into component parts and how to rebundle them into more valuable hole you added a guarantee to get more people to buy your offer and actually consume it so they could be more successful you presented it with urgency and scarcity to get more people to desire it and now you've named your offer so it attracts the right prospects and repels the bad ones all while containing a big promise everyone can understand but we covered a lot so I want to give you a quick breather before we forge into book two to help you attract clients and monetize your offer free gift number 10 bonus create the perfect name for your product naming your product properly helps your avatar know the product is for them and is valuable and will solve their problems if you want to do this live with me go to acquisition.com/training/offers and select naming products to watch a short video tutorial so you can start using this in your business to make more sales ASAP i also made a free naming formula checklist for you to use and reuse with your team it also works for naming promotions as always it's absolutely free enjoy section 5 execution how to make this happen in the real world chapter 16 your first 100,000 the first 100,000 is a but you got to do it i don't care what you have to do if it means walking everywhere and not eating anything that wasn't purchased with a coupon find a way to get your hands on 100 grand after that you can ease off the gas a little bit charlie Mer Vice Chairman Bertra Hathway march 2017 my heart was racing i could literally feel each beat pounding into my chest i clenched my jaw to fend off the knot in my throat that I knew would lead to tears i wanted to give in years of emotions were bottled below the surface years of ignoring my reality and lack of success years of putting off how I felt just focusing on moving forward the pressure was shooting to the surface i could feel it we did it I said ila my wife now looked up at me she was in the kitchen making dinner and stopped spatula in hand what do you mean we did it we hit 100 grand i could barely say the words because I didn't want the tears to break through the tremble in my voice like revenue no like in our personal bank accounts holy really that's amazing she ran over to me disregarding the food on the stove and wrapped her arms around my neck spatula still in hand "i'm so proud of you." She squeezed me i slumped into her arms it was like every knot in my body that I had been holding on to melted all at once i could barely contain myself but when I think back to it the feeling I had wasn't happiness it was relief i had moved from fear to security i traded feeling like a failure every day watching my work and effort yield nothing to realizing a dream the constant anxiety and fear of what are we going to do finally replaced by something else i finally had time to let myself feel something i felt like the struggle chapter of my life was finally over "look," I said "it's for real." I nuzzled my head out of Ila's arms i didn't want to look her in the eyes because I knew it would put me over the edge i pulled my phone out and put it between us we both stared at the unmoving screen with our personal bank account balance $101,18 our gaze remained unbroken as it confirmed our new shared reality it wasn't an illusion it wasn't revenue it wasn't profit that was still in the business account only to be taken out later by some unforeseen emergency it wasn't earmarked money that had to be used to pay off some debt it was ours it was real babe we could up and not make another dollar for three straight years and still be okay at the time $33,000 per year was more than enough for us to live on at our current expenses for 3 years and some years of ups and downs years of plowing money into my businesses only to watch it vanish in overhead payroll and mistakes years of seminars courses workshops coaching programs masterminds had finally turned into wealth it felt like I had broken into a new plane the relative increase in wealth was more than I have ever felt tens of millions of dollars in the bank later it was and still is the richest I have ever felt in my life it was the beginning of the next chapter of my life as a business person and entrepreneur some people get there fast some people get there slowly but everyone gets there eventually as long as you don't give up keep moving forward keep getting up keep believing it can happen and it will in a nutshell we've covered a lot and I think it's important for information to sink in that it be consolidated and restated so this is the back of the napkin bullet list to summarize what we've learned so far and why one we covered why you must not be a commodity in this marketplace two why you should pick a normal or growing market and why niches get you riches three why you should charge a lot of money four how to charge a lot of money using the four core value drivers five how to create your value offer in five steps six how to stack the value deliver it and make it profitable seven how to shift the demand curve in your favor using scarcity eight how to use urgency to decrease the action threshold of buyers nine how to strategically use bonuses to increase the demand of your offer 10 how to completely reverse buyer risk with a creative guarantee and 11 how to name it in a way that resonates with your avatar you now have a valuable high margin decommoditized grand slam offer this is the first building block of a wonderful business a product or service that people desperately want and truly solves their problem for many this will be enough to make far more sales at higher prices with more profit your first true grand slam offer should be able to get you to your first 100 grand for others you will still want more which is 100% your right as a capitalist there's so much more to building an acquisition machine profitably i could not cover it all in one book out of respect for you I wanted to make this thorough but manageable that being said the next book is dedicated to exactly that getting more through generating leads in that book I will break down exactly how to acquire customers at a profit meaning if you structure promotions properly you should never have to pay for a new customer again and that is the subject of acquisition volume 2 $100 million lead generation final thoughts entrepreneurship is about acquiring skills beliefs and character traits to advance I find that we must determine which skills beliefs and character traits we lack most times we simply need to improve the only way to do that is through learning from experience and/or high-quality sources i have received terrible advice from people who were ahead of me at the time and though experience is the best teacher she is not the kindest it is my most sincere hope that what I produced provides the guidance I so desperately needed when I was coming up on my entrepreneurial journey and I wish I could cover it all in a single book for my sake and yours but to do you the service I wish I had had I cannot the devil is in the details excellence exists in the depths of knowledge and nuances that's what separates the great from everyone else i hope that in all the content I produce you see my dedication to the detail and nuance that makes all the difference these lessons were hard one i hope you enjoyed the first volume in my $100 million series before we move forward into volume two where we'll be focusing on lead generation as mentioned above I want to circle back to where we started after reading this book I hope one you're well on your way to creating your first grand offer or at the very least can take components of that you were missing in your offer to make it more compelling to your market i also hope that I've delivered on my promise from the beginning of this book that investing two to three hours of your time here would yield you a far higher return than just about anything else you could do and thirdly I hope in return I've taken one small step to earning the thing that I value most from you your trust finally I hope this book creates a small dent in improving the world because I believe no one is coming to save us it's up to us as entrepreneurs to innovate our way into a better world and that's something I'm willing to devote my life to and I hope you are too i'm grateful for your attention you could have given it to anything and you chose to invest it with me i take that in the highest regard so sincerely thank you stay hungry Alex ps see the golden ticket below golden ticket admit one if you're doing 3 million to $50 million per year and you'd like my help oneonone scaling your business go to acquisition.com specifically we help service education training consulting brickandmortar or niche licensing companies scale so profitably they only have to get rich once i'm not the make your first dollar guy i'm the make the last dollar you'll ever need to make guy if that sounds like you you're savvy enough to figure out how to get a hold of me on my site and book a call would love to meet you and hear about how your business is working and see if we can help and hopefully invest and watch you grow would you be opposed to growing faster if not you can check out my next book aptly named acquisition.com volume 2 lead generation which covers you guessed it lead generation you'll never run out of new customers if you follow the steps in that book especially now armed with the offer we have built not sure if that's the final name it's still in edits but if you search for my name you'll probably find it you'll also likely find it on my site acquisition.com next audiobook if you like listening and having all your books with you to reference that's what I do you can grab the Kindle version or the alternative version of any or all of my books on Amazon i like reading and listening at the same time to increase my absorption and consumption speeds just search for the book titles and they'll come up podcast if you like listening I have a podcast called The Game where you can tune in to short episodes that deliver tactical lessons learned from failures so you can get to your goals faster check out the podcast here alexpodcast.com youtube i have a YouTube channel with fresh tutorials a few times a week you can just search my name Alexi to find it instagram you can follow me on Instagram if you like the more personal stuff or the end acquisition.com volume one million offers how to make offers so good people feel stupid saying no written and performed by Alex Herozi copyright 2021acquisition.com audio production copyright 2021acquisition.com audible hopes you have enjoyed this program foreign