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The Art of Selling Online Courses
The Art of Selling Online Courses is all about online courses.
The goal of this podcast is to share winning strategies and secret hacks from top performers in the online course industry. We are interviewing successful business owners, asking them questions on how they got to the point where they are right now, and checking how their ideas can help you improve your online course!
The Art of Selling Online Courses
How To Go From Zero to $1M/Year With a Facebook Group - with David Denning
In this episode, David Denning reveals how he built a Facebook group with 35,000 insurance agents that generates over $1 million in annual revenue.
David shares his journey from zero industry knowledge to building a thriving community, including the critical turning point when he switched from low-ticket offers to high-ticket coaching. Learn the systematic sales approach that achieves 25-40% close rates, how to hit the crucial 1,000-member milestone where groups become self-sustaining, and why creating genuine community value drives long-term client retention.
Whether you're just starting a Facebook group or looking to monetize an existing one, this episode provides actionable strategies for turning engaged members into premium clients.
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I think any entrepreneur has been there right, Like oh, we have ideas, we think these things would be great, but I mean it was the definition of. It's not true. If you build it, they will come Build a dreams lie to me. It's not a true statement when it comes to entrepreneurship. Like find the audience, find the need and fill the need is way better than trying to build something you think is gonna be the solution without really knowing for sure. Like we actually grew up to the first 15,000-ish members organically, not a paid ad, not a dime. Everything changed. We realized, okay, we have the opportunity to create a coaching offer, high-ticket coaching offer, and we can pull in a couple amazing authorities. And that's when we launched our first program and that's when, overnight, we had our biggest month ever. And then it continued doubling every single month. We do over a million plus a year from a Facebook group.
Speaker 2:In this interview, we're going to be learning how to grow a Facebook group and make millions of dollars from it. We're going to cover how to figure out what niche to focus on, the steps to grow the group, what to post in the group and more. And my guest is someone who's done this himself. David is a co-founder of Jumpstart Go, where he helps insurance agents grow their businesses. He's built his Facebook group to 35,000 agents. David, welcome to the show.
Speaker 1:Thanks, john, super happy to be here.
Speaker 2:So could you start off by giving everybody some kind of idea of the size of your business, so number of customers or revenue or whatever you're happy to share?
Speaker 1:absolutely yeah, I mean we do about a million a year or so for the business. So I'd say about 38 new customers is about what we're averaging right now. A month we've worked with about 800 plus different insurance agents and agencies and yeah, we've got some aggressive goals. We're looking to grow this year but yeah, we're happy to that. We do over a million plus a year from a Facebook group.
Speaker 2:Nice. So who do you help? You mentioned insurance, and who is it that you're helping?
Speaker 1:So specifically focused around insurance agents and insurance agencies in the US, some in Canada, but mainly US. But all different areas of insurance PNC, which is our home and auto and stuff that most people are really familiar with, as well as health insurance, medicare, which is more seniors in the US, and then life insurance and financial advisors all fall into the categories that we help.
Speaker 2:Got it, and what size is your Facebook group now?
Speaker 1:that we help Got it, and what size is your Facebook group now?
Speaker 2:Right now, it's right at 35,000 insurance agents 35,000. So how did you build it up to being that size?
Speaker 1:Well, it didn't start off the right way, so I'm happy to talk about lessons learned.
Speaker 2:Maybe let's start there then, okay.
Speaker 1:But if I go, I'm not going to go deep in the background here, but if I come to the background of my co-founder, ellen, I was also my spouse. We both come from marketing consulting backgrounds. We did a lot of web design and marketing consulting for small businesses, startup software, including a little bit into the insurance space. Eventually met a third partner of ours, renee Cabrera, who came from the insurance industry, was doing marketing for 200 agencies then and said hey, I love working with you guys. This industry is very old, it's very outdated, it's very slow to change. I think there's a lot of opportunity for the things that you guys know and teach to come in and help this industry do really well, which 92% of agents don't make it past the first couple of years. So it's a very difficult industry and we said, okay, so there's a lot of need and there's a lot of opportunity.
Speaker 1:No zip about this industry or this niche. I didn't know anything. I thought it was a bunch of old dudes in suit and ties that knock on doors and I thought it was this terrible industry and started doing some projects with them, started the Facebook group and we're like this is a really amazing industry. It's just really old and outdated and so I guess a tip there is you don't need to know the niche inside and out if you have ways to help them.
Speaker 1:And then first thing was learning those pain points and problems. So we started the Facebook group, kind of for our own purposes as well, as to dive in and see, hey, where can we help the most, the most, what is the most interested in, and also pick up some of the jargon vernacular of the industry, as we were forming this group and had this kind of audience that we were building as well. So off the bat did not know much about this industry and I learned it from the group as we went along, now that we knew the areas that we were going to help them with really well. It was just finding out specifically that niche and becoming an authority in that space over that time, which is what the group allowed us to do over that time. But yes, we first started building it, but had we had a lot of experience in the industry or the group?
Speaker 2:No, so how did you start building it? Because you mentioned that you did it the wrong way to start with.
Speaker 1:So I would say we thought it was going to be a lot simpler and easier at the beginning and we didn't have a lot of insight other than our own knowledge around groups. It wasn't like we had different experts kind of guiding us along that, which would have been a lot faster. But in reality, beginning a Facebook group unless you're just going to put a lot into ads to the group which Facebook wasn't really even allowing back then it kind of changed their tune on it a little bit. But we were just doing it organically and that's one of our specialties is organic social media anyways and so we started it and that first 200 members is all you it is. It is everything you. That's the post, the commenting, engagement, getting people in it.
Speaker 1:It's really a ton of work, which is why it's not even one of the first techniques we usually teach clients.
Speaker 1:But and then it gets a little bit easier and then, once you hit that 1,000-member mark, it gets where they're creating the majority of the content. They're talking with each other, discussions. You don't have to do as much in the group at that point, but at the beginning we're also doing a lot of manual stuff. I was inviting people to the group and then as we had the activity and more and more join the group, facebook would then recommend our group in similar groups and other places and we get more and more organic and the higher engagement we had, the more people would recommend to it. So I did a lot of manual things that weren't scalable but worked at the beginning, and then also Facebook. The more our group grew and became more popular then, the more it took care of that for us organically. So we actually grew up to the first 15,000-ish members organically, not a paid ad, not a dime of trying to drive people from any paid methods to the group.
Speaker 2:So you mentioned that up until that 1,000-member mark, it was all on you guys. What did that look like? Were you posting a lot of content? Were you trying to start conversations amongst people? Were you doing polls? What kind people Were you doing polls? What kind of thing were you doing to create, to get that group active?
Speaker 1:I'll talk about some things we did right and some of the things that I would have changed.
Speaker 1:Some of the things we did right which I don't think we even realized how important this was until later on, and now we very much teach clarity or to be clear over clever.
Speaker 1:As far as, like the group name, we literally named the group marketing for insurance agents, what we were doing and who it was for, and I think hands-down that's one of been the biggest things that's helped is people knew exactly what the group was for. As they searched on Facebook as new Agents or agencies, they found it by searching those terms. It was very clear, versus naming it something which I have no idea what that name means Insurance, you know, rocket ship or insurance, you know like what does that mean? But marketing for insurance agents it was very clear and so people found it naturally, and I think that was one of the biggest things. So when someone's building a group, we very much make it very clear who it's for and what you're helping with. If you put that in the name, it's going to help a ton. So that was a big factor that helped us, I think, a lot at the beginning and that's kind of like that.
Speaker 2:You know, you have that meme of like a real idiot and someone incredibly intelligent and they both do the same thing and in between you've got people doing all kinds of you know crazy wacky other stuff, because that sounds just like well, that's so blindingly obvious that of course you call it that.
Speaker 1:But I know that I come up with clever names for shit all the time, which don't help at all I think that's very interesting because I watch, like you know, silicon valley and some of these tech startups and they're always trying to do something really unique or crazy with the name, but then they always have to explain to everybody what it is, because no one knows what it is based on the name. If someone came up and just said Uber and you had no clue what Uber was, what does that mean? I don't know. It sounds German. I don't know what that you know. You'd have to explain what that is. And so for us, like we realized very much so that you know, when you make it easy for your prospects and audience to find you and know what you do, then the easier it is for them to work with you or to follow you as a part of that. So I don't think we realized at the beginning, but that that was a big help, right. So it wasn't like, oh, let's come up with, like all these do a a charrette, and like chat GBT didn't exist back then, but we probably would have used it to name the group back then if it had been. But yeah, so that was the first thing. But yeah, we did a group description. We did our best at it. In fact, I think I'll probably still need to update it because it's worked so long.
Speaker 1:We didn't want to touch it as far as messing with anything that stood out as far as SEO or the kind of Facebook size with it, but at the beginning of that group, no one knows about this group. When you start a group, no one knows about this group. Like when you start a group, facebook doesn't automatically start feeding people to it, and so that's where, yes, I invite people that I maybe know in the industry or I was actually in other groups and would go to their members list and I would send friend requests to people in those members list. They would accept them and then I would invite them to the Facebook group, which Facebook has an invite feature. On that side too, we get people in there. I would also email out. We did some email to those that we knew, but also cold email out to agents or inviting them to the group as well. All these things are not the best ways of scaling, but they worked at the beginning to get those initial agents in to the group. And then at that point, we did some like referral contests where we had people invite people in the group. We do like a gift card. In fact, if they were local, I remember we actually went and like delivered in person, got some pictures and put in the group.
Speaker 1:But at the very beginning the content's us Like no one is just like popping in the group posting a bunch of content at the very beginning especially because this was kind of earlier earlier on, before Facebook groups like really really blew up and so we were doing posts and we'd come up with theme days, uh, like you know Monday connections or you know Tuesday and stuff like that, and we do do those.
Speaker 1:But at the end of the day we realized like the content came from us and also the engagement had to come from us. So I would tag people that had commented before or engaged, that I knew had done it at least once in the group, and then they would engage again on stuff, and so we had to do a lot of that ourselves. Now, if you already are known and you start a group or you already have an audience or you have some clients, then yeah, you could fast track that a lot quicker. But we were hopping into a brand new industry that we didn't really have a lot of existing audience or clientele, so it was more work at the beginning.
Speaker 2:Gotcha Okay. So you've done all that manual work to get it started and then you reach the point where the the group was a bit more self-sufficient in terms of people posting content in there and commenting and what have you you said about the thousand person mark. Is that right?
Speaker 1:about the thousand person mark is where, like I, really the majority of the content, all that sort of stuff, doesn't really need to come from me. At 200, I would say there's pretty regular content coming from others. I still got to pretty much still make sure I'm encouraging engagement stuff coming from me. But at a thousand, most of the day-to-day content comes from them. And that's where we focused eventually moving to like almost a single piece of content a week and we would do a Facebook live every single week. And this was back when Facebook highly, highly rewarded Facebook lives and I think we were one of the first groups, especially in our industry, that was regularly doing Facebook live trainings and bringing guests on. And at that point we weren't huge authorities in the industry. So I would bring on guests from other places, kind of like on podcasts or other things. You invite guests and then you kind of tap into their audiences and stuff as well. We did that with a lot of authorities in the space and we ended up building this, this audience of people that would come to the group for these other audiences and then they would stay right like kind of like podcasts. They come for the guests but stay for the host, right. So same thing, same thing with the group is like maybe come from the guests but stay. Oh, I like this community, I like this area. We weren't using it to recruit agents to would like an agency which most Facebook groups in the industry were using them that way. So agents were happy to be in our group, knowing they weren't getting recruited and stuff like that. So we created a good atmosphere.
Speaker 1:But, yeah, we eventually moved back from the content and we just did a single piece a week. But we did have this audience and we had nothing really to offer. So we ended up doing some low ticket offers in that, in that um where I remember the very first offer and our partner and us had background in Facebook ads. We knew Facebook ads to this industry at that point in time was like brand new, even though other industries had used them for a while, and so we said, hey, we're going to create this Facebook ad. Course, how to do the ad? Here's creative, you can grab and use copy targeting and we're going to skyrocket. We're going to do like I think we had, like we had at least 5,000, 10,000 agents in the group at that point and we're like this is going to be great, launch it.
Speaker 1:And I think we had like two deals that week and it was like okay, which is why it's important to know, your industry is extremely older and tech challenged in general, and so we were delivering something way above what they even had the capacity to tap into. Like they didn't know that there was a Facebook ads platform. They didn't know how to get to, they didn't know how to leverage it and, even though we had walkthroughs, it was just beyond what they were able or knew how to put in place. So we realized, okay, we've got to come back down to basics with them as far as marketing and putting these things in place. And that's when we realized like, hey, the organic is going to be a little bit easier to help them with that. But yeah, I mean, we tried that. And then we eventually like, hey, these other, we can find great resources.
Speaker 2:And we have people who want to get in front of our audience Before you feel, when you launched it and you had two people.
Speaker 1:Terrible, terrible, terrible, I mean. But I think any entrepreneur has been there, right, like we have ideas, we think these things would be great. But I mean it was the definition of. It's not true. If you build it they will come.
Speaker 1:Field of dreams lied to me, it's not a true statement when it comes to entrepreneurship, Like find the audience, find the need and fill the need is way better than trying to build something you think is going to be the solution without really knowing for sure.
Speaker 1:Like we could have done a lot more market testing, we could have done a lot more conversations with the audience and finding is this something really that they would put in place? And I think we would have probably realized earlier on that, you know, even though in their minds they may have thought that might have been something they wanted, it wasn't something they were either comfortable hopping into or that they maybe even realized their need. Because the insurance industry especially is very big on selling leads, so a lot of agents just buy them from lead vendors and so generating their own was something. Oh, that sounds nice in theory, but that's kind of a risk to switch away from buying from vendors. It's kind of the devil you know type situation there, and so, yeah, that's a's kind of a risk to switch away from buying from vendors.
Speaker 2:It's kind of the devil, you know type situation there, and so yeah, that's a big lesson learned.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think it's so. It's very, very common. I still find it difficult even though I teach other people this that when you're thinking that you've got this great idea for a new course to make or a program or whatever it's like, it might be wonderful in your head, you know, it might be wonderful in, in your understanding of reality, but you've got to find out from your audience do they actually want this thing? Before you spend whatever two months making a new course that you're like oh, I'm going to make every video perfect and I'm going to teach this thing exactly right, and it turns out, no, that isn't the thing that anybody wanted to know about. And one of the things I recommend to people is to do surveys of the audience.
Speaker 2:Another one is to do interviews with people. You know, like message with people back and forth or get on a zoom call and chat with them and just be like what's your kind of problems you've got at the moment and what do you want help with? And if we were going to make a course, what would it be about? And if we we've got this one that we're thinking of making, would that be useful? And then, once you've kind of got enough feedback because people will say yes to you. If you say we've got this great idea, they'll go oh yeah, that sounds cool.
Speaker 2:You know it's like okay, now do a pre-sale, is it will enough people buy it to make it worth like actually buy it, actually spend money on it to make it worth building it. And it's one of the reasons actually I'm quite a big fan of starting off with doing coaching and then going downstream to doing courses, because if you start with coaching, you like you can, just you can sell coaching without building the thing. You just say to somebody you know, like you message with a few people, find the ones who are interested and then say do you want to start doing this thing? And then you start to kind of create it from there and you see, is their interest?
Speaker 1:but um, it's funny you mention that because that's almost exactly the path that happened with us, right? So we start, we start off there and then we lean too far the other direction. We had an audience that was growing and we were like, oh well, let's find people and things already have a demand in the audience. And yeah, we'll, we'll find great resources, we'll invite them on a podcast, we'll do more of an affiliate type things. We had the audience and audience paying attention to us, and so that's what we did. We ended up pulling in other authorities from the industry a great product, services, software, that type of stuff and we started earning some off of it. But we were maybe 10,000 a month, kind of good months. As far as it coming through. It wasn't hitting our, our income revenue goals that we really wanted. And we're like man, and that's where we couldn't control like their relationship with these, these partners. So if a partner went out of business or if they change things, or I remember two partners actually split and create their own competing products after we had introduced them to our audience, we were like, okay, I don't like this, it doesn't help us be seen as authorities at all, we're just more Billy mazing it. Hey, look at this great thing, Look at this great thing Right, Instead of like, really focusing on our authority, our audience, our brand which I would also highly recommend doing that instead of doing affiliate side. And that's when everything changed. We realized, ok, we have the opportunity to create a coaching offer, high ticket coaching offer, and we can pull in a couple amazing authorities, including our backgrounds, but authorities from the industry as well as a part of this. And that's when we launched our first program, the Closers Click, and that's when, overnight, we had our biggest month ever and then it continued doubling every single month. We eventually got up to $60,000 a month and then a few months later, up to $100,000 a month. That we were doing at that point in time and it went very, very quickly and we realized that was a huge opportunity.
Speaker 1:But I will come back to what you said is L, my spouse? She had built all for all these affiliate things. She built constant landing pages, constant emails, as I'm sure you know a ton about right, and she did all this work and she's doing a lot herself and she's like for this offer, I'm not building anything. You convinced me to do this, but I'm not building anything except a checkout page. We're going to do it live with the first group that signs up for this and we're going to just do live coaching. There's going to be no course, there's going to be no curriculum. We're going to do it with them as we go, and I also think that was one of the biggest best things we ever did as well.
Speaker 1:So one we didn't have all the pre stuff, were building the right thing. What you just said, but also the second thing was we also realized, as we went through this with them, what they had more questions on, what they had more need of. And as we're doing a live, we were able to refine so that eventually, when we turned it into a curriculum that went along with it, we were actually just using live recordings of the calls and eventually we came back and recorded actual lessons for it, but we actually ended up putting a curriculum together. That was the live coaching that we've done with the first group. So I full believer of what you just said of like, build it as you go and you don't have to initially build it, especially when you're have a coaching element to it and you're not just doing a course so let's break that down a little bit, because that was a pretty massive journey.
Speaker 2:We just went on. You went from maybe ten thousand a month up to having $100,000 a month in that last two minutes for us. So this is massive. So you started off with this you wanted to have that high ticket coaching. What was the price of that at the time?
Speaker 1:So, going into that we were doing maybe around 10,000-ish a month from the Facebook group and we had about 15,000 members organically as a part of that group. And that's where we were at and we were like, man, we're doing so much work but we're not really breaking out of this. This is definitely not where we want to go. So we decided, yes, we're going to launch this high-ticket coaching program and at that point I think we were pricing it. On launch it was like $3,500 if you full paid, and the first group that full paid would actually have lifetime access to monthly, I think it. I think if they broke into payments it would be around $5,000 and that was what it came out to. So they saved a bit with the full pay and they got lifetime with it. And I remember on launch, we did like $26,000 on launch within like that week for the first initial signups for it. And then then when we opened again cause we did we did close it for um, I think it was about six to eight weeks where we were just going through that initial group, making sure to hit wins, deliverables, collect testimonials, all that sort of stuff. So when we launched again, it would be kind of outside of this smaller beta group. We didn't call it a beta group, but essentially it was.
Speaker 1:And then at that point when we opened again, we did 60,000 and then started adding a couple of setters on the team and then that's allowed us to do a hundred thousand. I was doing the only one doing sales calls that month and I was like I'm done, I'm sales team to help out at that point. But so so part of that was one higher ticket which I think we were scared that people wouldn't purchase at that, but they definitely. When they saw the value, they absolutely were able to purchase that and they were better clients than the lower ticket, which it was just great. It was like they're going to pay more and be better clients and less headaches and trouble over like complaining about a course ticket type thing. So that I think really dispelled some limiting beliefs that we had had at that point in time and I'm so glad that we did it.
Speaker 2:Okay, how were you getting people to book the call with you? So you said you were doing sales calls. So obviously the sales call was the way that this was done. I'm guessing a one call close, was that right?
Speaker 1:Back then. Yes, it was just one call. So we were doing Facebook lives every week. And we do Facebook lives where we would launch or we would talk about opening this, and then we'd have emails, you know, kind of like a normal promo cycle. And so we have this launch, we have doors closing, we have these bonuses and we do Facebook live and people be like yeah, I'm interested, comment the keyword reach out, and then we would have sales calls where I take them through what the offer was. And I do remember the very first launch off at Facebook Live we hey, if you're interested in this, hop into the Zoom room afterwards. And we had a group hop in there and that's where the very first people, as we launched, booked with us. They just had a few questions, then they hopped into the offer there, so that we don't normally do group type sales pitches um, we might like talk about it on a live, but then we usually do one-on-one calls okay, so what do you sell nowadays?
Speaker 2:you've got that high ticket program, still right, and what was that called?
Speaker 1:I forget uh, the program is called the closer scott click closest click.
Speaker 2:Okay, cool, so you've still got that it's still about a thousand bucks a month is. Is that right?
Speaker 1:So, yes, so I mean we've and we've played around with a lot of different whereas a yearly model or they could like have lifetime access to the community and curriculum and stuff but not, you know, in six months of the one on one coaching and everything, and eventually we realized, like we're going out and having to find new customers every single month and we have these amazing customers.
Speaker 1:We love to keep working with us and keep paying us as part of that too. So eventually I think it was about three, four months ago we switched to um, where they can work with us monthly, quarterly or annually, but this is more of a recurring type thing with us and um. It's worked out great. Actually, I think with economy and different stuff, people are even more. It's easier for them to even do like $1,000 a month or 2,800 a quarter on that side. But yes, we still have clients that want to do the 9,000 for the year on that side. But I do think it opened it up because in the past, yeah, it sometimes been like 7,000 or 8,000 for like six months for the program.
Speaker 2:And so the program, and so I think that we found a very good sweet spot right now. Yeah, I'm a massive, massive fan of if someone wants to carry on working with you, make sure you have an option for them to carry on working with you because it's like you're happy for them, they're paying you and they're getting results and they're nice to work with and they get to carry on working with you and you get to keep helping them like. We've had clients in our group coaching program who will stick in there for like two years, three years, something like that, and it's like great, this is fabulous.
Speaker 2:And I see other people with businesses where every month, they have to start again from scratch and it's like, oh, that's, that would be more stressful, you know, and it's like I see why people so a lot of people who have that feeling in the course space, then switch to a membership model. It's like memberships has then got its own different kind of set of challenges that go with it, and this, the the high ticket option of having this ongoing high ticket program is, I think, got a lot of benefits to it, certainly on top of some of the low ticket ones as well. Okay, so you've got that. Are there any other offers that you have? Is there anything else that you're selling now?
Speaker 1:We, about three or four months ago, added a low ticket so as kind of almost like an essential model or more almost like a downsell. Essentially, if someone wasn't qualified for the main program like financially for example then we would hey, we have a program where you can go ahead and start learning this. It's curriculum plus a once-a-week group coaching and then like a forum we can ask questions on, and that's gone really well. I think we see a lot of promise on that. We've had some people ascend from that into the main program as they've gotten results leveraging that. But we've had people from the industry come to us and say, hey, we would love to put our downline agents into something where they can learn these things. We would love to put, like, our downline agents into something where they can learn these things, but maybe not ready for the main program yet.
Speaker 1:So it's, it's led to some cool opportunities. It's still still newer but we've liked it and I think it complements the higher ticket program. It definitely wouldn't be something I'd want to only have as a product. I just find it's a lot harder to hit the numbers and just the amount of people and kind of I wouldn't say like the actual teaching within. It's a lot of work, but you know it's it's a lot. You have a lot less margins on a low ticket, especially if you're going to run ads or anything to drive business to it. So that's where we still mainly focus on the main program and then we use that one more as a downsell or a bonus, or if someone has a team they want to put into and then we do some private consulting too.
Speaker 2:Okay, so talk us through that. How does that work?
Speaker 1:Yeah, for larger like agencies that are, you know, kind of a few million to 10 plus million a year we will do private consulting for whatever the project is whether it's like building onboarding and training systems for their agents and we'll put together a whole platform where they go through onboarding, training. It can track them, their progress and help their managers kind of see insights on that. Or recruiting funnels as far as it's very big in the industry is recruiting more agents and new people. So you know, helping on that, so kind of whatever the project is. And we usually do that kind of in three-month sprints.
Speaker 1:So we have, whatever the project is, the goals. We work with them one-on-one for three months to accomplish the goals in that project and then if there's the next step of that project, our next goals, we'll do that. Otherwise they'll hey, perfect, we got stuff rolling, we'll come back as we have the next project there. So we do that in some. And we did a one-off software project for like a $2 billion insurance company built an online and we did a one-off software project for like a $2 billion insurance company but online quoting system and stuff for them Not something we typically do, but that was kind of a good relationship opportunity that we did take. Okay. And then what do you charge people for the private months? And if it's something more we're like developing, onboarding, training systems, like a platform that we're helping them with and doing it might be like 15 000 or something like that for the three months.
Speaker 2:It really depends on the project and scope of work and is that you and l doing that coaching with them, or is that okay?
Speaker 1:yes, it's l and I, and then we'll leverage team members for certain like parts of like building the platform or manage leverage like our virtual assistants in some capacities. But yes, for strategy and the meetings with the client and so on, for those Sometimes we'll pull in one of our other coaches from the industry if it's something very specific to their specialties, of course.
Speaker 2:Now, one of the things I want to get into the process that you're using in terms of around the sales. The process that you're using in terms of around the sales. But I think, if I remember right, that you're running ads to your Facebook group as well. Now to grow the group, is that right?
Speaker 1:We are. When we started that high ticket when we first launched it, a couple months later we started running ads to the Facebook group. So they weren't ads to sales calls, they were ads to the free Facebook group. And once we got in the community then we had all the time in the world to kind of nurture them, get them into things and as they joined we'd welcome, we'd try to grab a call with them and see what they kind of needed, maybe get them booked to a sales call from there and stuff, and so originally that was just all the only place that any Facebook ads for free, sending them to the Facebook group. You know, slowly we had it kind of got about 50-50 from ads and organic joins to the group, where we still had plenty of organic. But we also had target audience coming in from the ads which, if I went back, I would have started that a little earlier because I could have got a lot more targeted people coming in from the ads. Once again, lots of lessons learned as we went along.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so that was that was like our sales process ads to the Facebook group as well as organic Facebook lives or connecting with people from the group or new joins to then book for the sales calls. And then I was taking those and eventually it was like I want more of this filled on my calendar and more of my time on sales calls. So that's when we kind of made our first major change to our sales process and brought on setters that primarily worked the Facebook group as far as connecting and getting people set to sales calls with me, and they booked me solid, for I remember it was March of maybe 2020. And that was I took like 72 sales calls. They were all like 45 minutes an hour long and we did over a hundred thousand. That month was our first month breaking six figures and I was happy. But I was dead and I was like, okay, time to time to start rolling and bring in another closer.
Speaker 1:And so for a long time and even until today, we still run a setter closer model. So we have setters that set from our group. Now they also leverage, you know, calling prospects um from, and everything's warm, it's not like cold. So they're calling prospects connecting through email or email list, connecting through the Facebook group, and then they're doing little 15 minute triages or qualification calls with them and then, if they're qualified, booking them to sales calls and then we have myself and another closer doing sales on that side and then we're in the process of hiring another closer, where I will be off the phones again as a part of that. But that's very much. Our sales process has worked great and I highly recommend someone's gonna leverage a Facebook group specifically. It's really, really worth it, and recently we don't have to necessarily go into this as well, but recently we've actually found virtual assistants actually can work amazing as the setting side and they've outperformed our American-based setters in the past. So now we only use virtual assistants for setters, and at a much, much more cost effective too.
Speaker 2:Got it. What does that mean? You said work the Facebook group follow up by email. Call people. Can you go into some like real specifics of like what are they actually sending in messages? At what point do they message somebody? Is it when someone joins? Is it when someone's comment like what is it that triggers that? And then what do they message them? And then how does that work?
Speaker 1:absolutely, and there's and there's a lot of opportunities. That's why I like it. It's from yes, new people join the group, that's as we're joining. We have the three questions where we get their email address, their phone number hey, would you like this resource? And as they join the group, we get their info anyways for email list or to reach out to them. And they'll reach out to new members Welcome to the group, see what's going on in their business, what they need help with, and then kind of lead that into a triage conversation.
Speaker 1:Now they'll also tag new members on one of our trainings, like, hey, welcome to the group, you might like this training. And they'll be like, yes, I would love that training. Or they realize they could just watch it above, which is great. They get indoctrinated with the training. But if they don't realize they can just watch it, they say, hey, I'd love that. I say, cool, some things that I can help you with.
Speaker 1:Or we'll do things called two steps, where we'll have either recorded training or a lead magnet or something of value there and say, hey, we had this recent training or we have this guide that we put together. Who wants this? And then we'll just get all these comments on that, and then they'll reach out. Hey, let me shoot that over to you in Messenger. Shoot that into Messenger and then they'll start a conversation and book them for triages and stuff there as well.
Speaker 1:Or it's just people are replying to posts in the group. They'll say, hey, that's great. Is this something that you're looking to learn more on? Oh yeah, you are Cool. Let me once again shoot you a DM and then book it to a triage. So that's really their process. They have a whole bunch of opportunities from both people attending our Facebook Lives each week, where most of them we do a soft call to action. If they comment a keyword, then the setters will go reach out to them and book for calls. And then every once in a while, we're doing a promo cycle where we'll have them book straight to calls with as far as triages with them as well.
Speaker 2:Nice, okay, and do you know about what percentage of people who there's one of your setters is is having one starting trying to start one of those conversations with actually turn into a conversation, and what percentage turn into a booked call?
Speaker 1:so I would say it's about a lot of them turn into conversations and whether right then or eventually right, because that's nice saying we don't lose them, even if they're like, oh, maybe later. Okay, cool, they're still in the group, we'll catch them later. But I would say about 60 to 70% are like yeah, I would love to learn more, I'd love to you know, I'm fine hopping on a short call. So we get a pretty high booking to the 15 minute triages and then I'd say about 50% of the triages is normally what we see on average over the years are qualified that we then book to sales calls.
Speaker 2:Wow, okay. So 60 to 70% of people who so let's just say, for example, somebody says, yes, I'd love that training the setter reaches out to them, about 60 to 70% of those people will then be interested in having a triage call, and of the people who have the triage call, about half of those then convert into a sales call afterwards.
Speaker 1:Yes, okay, and I'd say that's from two things.
Speaker 2:It's one having a very targeted Facebook group.
Speaker 1:The only people we allow in the group are insurance agents, and especially in the US and then Canada as well, but US and so having a target group means that this is the audience, that is our target audience essentially.
Speaker 1:And then the second thing is that we indoctrinate them a bit in the fact that a lot of them have this issue. Like I said, only 92% make it past the first year or two, and a lot of that is due to a lack of training and coaching and being able to acquire clients. That's the biggest thing. And so they are in these groups, especially marketing for insurance agents, because this is something they're interested in learning, putting in place or they have a problem or need. They don't normally just join the group for fun, essentially, and so I think that is why we have a pretty high number that are happy to have that. And then we ask some questions on the triage to see financially, time-wise, all these kinds of things, if it makes sense to have the sales call. But it's been really good metrics and they've been very consistent throughout the years too. You know, every once in a while they're, you know, kind of ups and downs a little bit where we kind of adjust, but that's pretty consistently the numbers.
Speaker 2:Nice, okay. And then of the people who get as far as a sales call, what percentage of those convert to buying?
Speaker 1:I would say it depends a little bit on if we're doing a promo cycle or not. As far as we've got some bonuses or some special stuff we're talking about like doors closing always. Time sensitivity always helps a bit more convert. But I would say anything from we expect on average at least a 25% close rate, but normally it gets closer to the threes and tops out and kind of like mid forties. So I was just looking at from last month. I think I was 40 something close rate and then our other center was like high thirties.
Speaker 2:Got it Okay, cool. Do people know, when they're jumping on that sales call, basically what it is that you're going to be offering and talking about?
Speaker 1:So lessons learned as well. Originally they didn't necessarily know all the kind of details, the main focus of ours and they thought, oh, maybe they're a lead vendor, maybe they're teaching ads, and so it did take some explaining. We teach organic, free social media strategies, referral partner strategies. Like this is different because we're very different than most other things out in the industry. Most of it falls into either paid leads or paid ads, and so we have realized the more indoctrination we can do prior to that call, the better. So we have some people that have been in the group for eight years. They know my blood type and dog's name. And then we have some people now they're just just saw an ad or just got in the group yesterday and they don't know much at all. And so that's where we do have pre-call items that they go through. So they do have a little assessment that they fill out.
Speaker 1:That helps us prepare for the call a bit and also us just reconfirm they're qualified and they also have these short videos they go through.
Speaker 1:There's a couple of Elle and I kind of talking a bit about what we do and kind of who's a fit, who's not a fit, and we kind of use that Annie, if you're this, cancel this sales call. So we even tell them cancel the sales call. If you don't want to personally be on social media at all or you think it's evil or the devil, cancel the sales call because that's kind of part of what we do here. And then we have additional testimonials and client results and all this sort of stuff on that pre-call that they can go through as well before they hop on. And so, yes, by the time they do hop on, they've got a pretty good idea. We're not a lead vendor, we're not doing paid ads. It involves social media, involves them personally using social media, and so it's helped a ton with the quality of the call and for us not to have to take quite as long explaining new concepts to them.
Speaker 2:Gotcha. All right, okay. So we've got Facebook group that you grow through, originally through content, lots of inviting people manually to it. Now, presumably, there's some organic growth of it through word of mouth. Facebook is recommending it to people as well. You've got the Facebook lives. You've got ads into the facebook group as well. You started out with the low ticket program and that worked to an extent or no, it didn't really work to an extent, it worked horribly. And then you went to the high ticket option and when you started to offer that, that went great and you've still been basically running that since. You've then got the setters in the facebook group going through and connecting with people and messaging with them, out of whom about 60 or 70 percent of them turn to a call, 50 percent of them convert to a sales call and about 25 to maybe sometimes 40, but probably 30 convert to a sale. So you're currently doing sales calls yourself, right, are you?
Speaker 2:doing all of them, or are you doing you've?
Speaker 1:got about 50 60 percent um and that's something our current closer um has is already told us. He's got the capability that he's going to start taking probably about 75%, and we're in the process of hiring another closer and then we'll get him on board and trained and between those two closers should be able to handle most of the sales calls. If it's a really big ticket, client or organization, then I'll hop on them, but ideally I'll be back off the sales calls before or again. So we just had some transitions on sales team that Elle and I were hopping on because we wanted to test some things, especially as we're moving to more of the recurring model. As we made those changes, it's always easier for us to test and have that kind of constant and then start inserting people into that, and so that's where we're at right now on that. So it's gone really well. We're super happy with it and look forward to once again being off the sales calls. Even though I enjoy them, they do take a lot of time but I look forward to being off those.
Speaker 1:But I do have one tip for your audience that I think is something I wanted to share, especially from those doing courses and these things, one of the things that we found was our superpower, but also, I think, everybody who does courses and has the capability of doing is the community aspect.
Speaker 1:We'd had no idea originally that our clients would connect so well with each other and like being a part of the community so much that they want to stay with us and continue being a part of the community ongoing as a part of that.
Speaker 1:So, yes, the results from the program were important, yes, the learning and learning new strategies, but the community aspect we didn't realize how powerful that was and so that's where we've really put together curriculum plus group coaching, plus one-on-one coaching, and then the community aspect is all what the program is together and we found that community aspect has been a huge thing on keeping people working with us, keeping people around us. They found great referral partners out of the community that they've changed their businesses just with one referring to the other and back and forth, or ideas they've picked up from each other. So I'd highly recommend, if someone is doing a course or a program like that, that there's a community aspect to it, because you don't even, I think, realize how big of the impact and ongoing impact of having that community aspect will bring to your program Nice.
Speaker 2:And what does that look like? That community aspect? Is that a separate Facebook group for the private people? Is it in Slack? Is it calls? How does it work?
Speaker 1:We've we done it. We tried to keep it very easy for our audience, who also, um, originally wasn't very tech advanced. So we just kept it to a separate Facebook group and that's been our private community. For our clients is a separate Facebook group for just those in the program. And, yes, we have group trainings each week. Where they're on there, they see each other on these, ask questions. We make it very interactive with these group calls and then we also do some social stuff. We'll bring them on a Zoom each month and do speed networking and some prizes and stuff there too. But that could very much nowadays. Also it could be a school group, it could be a Kajabi group. I mean, there's a lot of opportunities there. Just for us and the sake of where we started our platform and technology levels of our clients, we kept it on Facebook. If it originally went back and if school had existed at that time and maybe a slightly different audience, we probably wouldn't use something like that maybe. But for us it's been just a separate Facebook group.
Speaker 2:Cool, nice.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:So if I've done the sums right, you said 38 new clients a month. You're doing about 25% to 30% close rate. So that suggests something like 100 110 calls per month. Is that right?
Speaker 1:yeah, that sounds about right between myself and uh, our other closer how has it been hiring and managing the sales people?
Speaker 2:because that's something I see people have issues with. Sales people are sometimes a little bit.
Speaker 1:I don't know. We we could have a whole another podcast episode on our our sales process that we've gone through and I would say hiring ourselves originally we didn't have experience or anything set in that process was was terrible like we. We didn't know what to look for, what to hire, who was good, who was not. Then we eventually worked with some people that helped us find some of our first setters on that side and they were amazing. We actually were looking to hire closer and they're like no, you need setters first and to maximize your volume and then we can replace with the closer graduate a setter into a closer, and that was a huge difference and that was a great recommendation by them.
Speaker 1:It would have not gone as well if we had just brought on closer originally and so, yes, having someone who knows that and can help with that was as big and most of our I'd say I wouldn't say most actually, cause it's about 50, 50 of our closing team has come from either our own hiring processes or working with someone who's helped place them, I will say, with bringing on people who come from the high ticket closing space, you're right, a lot of them may have be very emotional or have very unrealistic expectations.
Speaker 1:In some cases I want to earn a million dollars in two days or they come from kind of jaded. They're like almost burnt out from it. So we've actually found some of our best closers and sales team has actually not come from high ticket closing space and there are people who've either developed into it or even brought from our own audience. I'm a huge fan of bringing people from our own audience. In fact, our current closer actually is a client of ours who did amazing within our program very quickly and he's like I love this and I would actually love to help you guys. As far as being a closer we interviewed took them through everything with the rest of the options. We're like man. This guy's amazing and he's been fantastic for us. So I would say, definitely don't be afraid to hire out of your own audience and people that already know you, love you, trust you, or even clients who've had a success with you, sometimes make the best closers for your offer nice.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I believed for quite a long time that I wouldn't be able to hire somebody to do the sales in my business because I didn't have enough volume, because we we operated a relatively low volume in terms of number of like calls a month. The number of sales we kind of, you know, just we're sending some stuff that you know some. Some people are spending a lot more money with this because they're doing a done for you service, so we don't need as many clients and then I trained up.
Speaker 2:I had one of my team members come, my marketing manager came on the sales calls with me and then she quizzed me every time about like well, how does this work and why is this done like this? And I realized I thought I had a system, but I kind of had a lot of it in my head and so then we made a lot more of it systematic and then we made a lot more of it automated. So pre-call emails, post-call emails how do you make the offer more compelling so that when you describe it, the offer does the work rather than the person who is actually describing it? Exactly? What are the answers to all of the objections that somebody might have?
Speaker 2:What other stuff can you do in advance? You mentioned about indoctrination. What videos can you have beforehand? What work can you do? Like we actually do a free funnel review for everybody who's having a call with us and that means that they can see that we know what we're talking about. We've helped them already. It's been a useful thing for them before they've even gotten a call. All of that stuff meant that eventually she then took on the calls for me and actually was better than I was did like had a higher conversion percentage because she followed the system exactly as it was, as it was written, which is not the easiest thing I find to do no, it's the same thing here.
Speaker 1:Like I kind of do things sometimes not replicable and I realize that doesn't work if I'm bringing people on and so the more they follow the process, the more consistent it is, the more I can bring other people in, and that is a change of like. You know, I'm just kind of used to doing things my way but realize, okay, I really got system ties at all, because that doesn't translate to other people.
Speaker 2:I can't just like insert my brain into someone else's brain what's happened recently that that marketing manager she just left and so I've taken on myself and yosip, I've taken on doing the, the sales calls again and we're like we're spotting all these places where we're like, oh, we could make this better and improve the process, kind of like what you were talking about. But it does worry me slightly. I'm like, what if we improve the process into a way that we're the only ones who can do that? And I'm like is that? Oh, is that gonna? You know, and they're converting great, like we, I convert about 50, and then yosef's sort of like 80.
Speaker 2:That's like, and I found out the reason that it works so much better when yosef's doing the calls is he's just helping people a lot more. So I'm doing like I'm following the process that we're kind of created before and explaining everything and asking lots of good questions and we've got a great offer and so a lot of people then sign up at the end, and what joseph's doing is he's like just helping people loads during the call and then talking about the next step. And I'm like, oh, I like that. I like the idea of helping people, just jump on a call and help people out. But it does make me nervous, because I'm like well, what if I can't then train somebody else in that step in terms of helping people, enough, you know so. But we're going to do it for now and we'll kind of see how that goes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I definitely think there's value in helping some on the call with especially more of the why.
Speaker 1:Getting into the how I found to be a little bit detrimental because they'll get a couple tips to be like, oh cool, I know what I can go apply, and they just get themselves in trouble only like knowing enough to be dangerous but not actually how to get the results. And so we've found explaining the why still helps them understand a lot and they feel like they've gotten a lot of value and stuff from it being like, okay, I also realize why it's. It's really helpful to have someone to type me through all the how and accountability and put all this stuff in place and that you can't cover lifetimes of knowledge and training and stuff on just this. This call's get, let's get into the program so I can really put this stuff in place. But helping and value first is always a huge aspect of trust, which in our industry a lot of people have been burned and so they come to us very jaded and so that's a huge thing is building that trust levels up at the very beginning all right, this has been great.
Speaker 2:I hope everybody listening is if you are already selling high ticket programs, this is probably like amazing. There's so much value here. People can just go and apply. If you're not doing and you're selling low ticket stuff at the moment, hopefully this gives you an idea of whether that is something that you could go do. And if you have a Facebook group and selling high ticket programs, this is probably gold. I'm just like right. This programs is probably gold. I'm just like right. This is exactly what I need to put in place. But I got one more question for you. You mentioned in the the stuff you emailed over beforehand, that one of the things you might be found doing if you're not working on the business is creating your perfect old-fashioned.
Speaker 1:Talk me through it so I do love old fashions. I would rather talk through my whiskey sours, all right, so I love old fashions, I I would rather talk through my whiskey sours, all right, so I love, I love old fashions. I do some cool stuff with those. But my whiskey sours I do an aloe saccharum, which is where you take different like citrus peels. I usually use orange peels and put some sugar and put them in a bag, put them in the freezer you can like vacuum seal them if you want and it pulls some of the oils and flavor out. It's usually good for punches if you're gonna do punches. But I will take some of those and then maybe, if I did like the same thing with like ginger, I can do it ginger too, but I'll use that as the base. I'll muddle it from there and then I go through the whiskey sour recipe which is a mix of. I use a little bit of Angostura bitters in them, but then it's simple syrup, lemon juice, it's bourbon I usually use a bourbon, but it could work with a rye, but I would say bourbon is more typical and then egg white, absolutely as in the whiskey sours on that side, and then I will dry shake, then I'll wet shake with ice. I'll double strain it and I have a little bit of like kind of sweetened cherry juice that goes in there and then I'll float the top with some cherry juice and use a toothpick to get those coffee art little designs in it, along with an orange twist and cherry with it as a part of it too. Every once in a while I might use a little lavender extract if I want a lavender kind of whiskey sour recipe.
Speaker 1:But yeah, they get ordered a lot at the house between hell and the bomb. So yeah, what bourbon the workhorse, day-to-day kind of stuff is like Benchmark. I like it because the distillery makes everything from that to Buffalo Trace to Pappy's. So they're a pretty good distillery and Benchmark is a good, great price point and sometimes it can be a little harder to find if they get sold out, but it's usually pretty easy to grab it at like an ABC or like a store in the US here. So that's more of what I typically use, especially for like a drink, like a whiskey sour. If it was something more like an old fashioned I might go a little higher in because it's going to stand out more Beautiful.
Speaker 2:David, thanks so much for coming on today. I really appreciate your time, and if people heard this and then want some more of your wisdom, where should they go? What's the best place? I want to go check you. Out.
Speaker 1:If they're an insurance agent at all, then definitely our Facebook group just called Marketing for Insurance Agents. Easy to find you can just literally search that in Facebook, it'll pop up. But just overall, if they want to learn more about us, our program, take a look at kind of one of our landing pages around that, how we structure it, all that kind of stuff which I think would be helpful for probably more of the majority of your audience landing page that we really have people come to they watch a short video, they see what we do, what we focus on, google reviews, all these things that lead into the 15 minute triage call where they can book a call with our setting team. That would be a really great example they can look at of kind of how we structure what people kind of see a little bit beforehand as well as social proof on it too.
Speaker 2:Nice Jumpstartgonowcom slash action dash call. I'll put the link in the show notes in the description as well Wicked. Thanks so much, david. Really really appreciate your time and always thank you for listening to the episode today.
Speaker 1:Thanks so much for having me here.