The Art of Selling Online Courses

This Simple Strategy Made $200k in 12 Months (COPY THIS)

• John Ainsworth

Share episode

Send us a text

I've put together a complete upsell page template for you, including AI prompts for writing each section. You can grab it free at datadrivenmarketing.co.uk/upsell

I've got to share this story with you because it's honestly one of the craziest results we've ever achieved. My team and I helped someone make $200,000 in 12 months using a single funnel hack - and here's the thing: I've never met her, never talked to her, never even exchanged an email with her. Nobody on my team has either.

In this episode, I sit down with Boris Mez, one of our funnel experts at Data Driven Marketing, to break down exactly how this works. Boris has 8 years in sales and marketing and has scaled multiple seven and eight-figure course businesses. The guy knows his stuff.

Here's what we cover:

  • Why most course creators will never scale (and it's not what you think)
  • The brutal difference between a 7% and 20% converting upsell
  • How to structure the perfect upsell page with our 13-element framework
  • Why "slap it and pray" upsells are killing your revenue
  • The exact offer types that actually convert (most people get this completely wrong)

Boris walks through a recent client case where we took their upsell conversion rate from 7.8% to 20.1% - that's nearly a 3X improvement. He reveals our four-step system: Acknowledge, Reassure, Redirect, Offer, and explains why 80% of your results come from getting the offer right.

Look, if you're selling courses - whether it's a $27 ebook or a $2,000 program - you need upsells. It's probably the only way you're going to scale. Every single business needs this.

Speaker 1:

I and my team made a stranger $200,000 in 12 months with this one funnel hack. I have never met her. I have never talked to her. I've never even had an email exchange with her. No one in my team ever has. In this video, I'll get Boris to explain how this tactic that we used works. Now I'm talking with Boris Mez. He's a funnel expert and account manager at Data Driven Marketing and he's got eight years in sales and marketing. Boris has scaled multiple seven and eight figure course coaching and consulting brands by creating high converting funnels and implementing email marketing strategies, and he specializes in upsell optimization. He's consistently helped clients dramatically increase their conversion rates and revenue through strategic funnel improvements.

Speaker 2:

The upsells are probably the only way to scale, because if you're a one product business, you're rarely going to be able to grow. Every single business needs to have an upsell in order to grow.

Speaker 1:

to scale You'll learn how to structure the perfect upsell page.

Speaker 2:

All right, so that's where the secret sauce is.

Speaker 1:

We're going to share them, so there's about how to choose the right upsell offer that actually converts.

Speaker 2:

If you find the right offer, it would bring you a lot more results. If you change this thing, it will bring you the 80% of results.

Speaker 1:

The difference between a 7% and a 20% converting upsell.

Speaker 2:

One of the things that almost everyone does is like trying to just slap an offer that they have and put it there and hope somebody buy it. Like clap it and pray.

Speaker 1:

And why. Most course, creators will never scale, and it's not what you think.

Speaker 2:

With a low ticket, you're going to acquire a customer, but how many $27 eBooks should you sell to actually make a six figure business? Well, if you have a few hundred dollars, All right.

Speaker 1:

Boris, welcome to the show, hey thanks, john, for having me. So can you explain for anybody who just doesn't know at all what we're talking about? What is an upsell?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so it's basically what you are seeing after your main purchase. So you always have a main purchase, like, if you're a business you're selling something, Upsell is what's happening after the main purchase. So let's say you're selling a car, then the upsell would be new tires, for example. So it's everywhere. It's in service businesses, in e-commerce, any kind of commerce really, and also in the course business industry.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it's a weird one, isn't it? Because I find that people in online businesses, where it's actually super simple to set up a lot of this kind of stuff, almost feel like this is something that either they don't know about it or they don't realize it's important, or they don't know that, like how to do it, or they feel like they shouldn't be doing it. But it's like this is all over. This is everywhere. This is whenever you buy something, there's the more expensive option that you can get. If you go to like apple's website and you want to buy an iphone, there's going to be a whole bunch of little order bumps of like. You know, buy a case or whatever, and there's always going to be the upsells of like.

Speaker 1:

Why don't you get some more memory? Why don't you get the pro model, all of these kinds of things, and it's just like. That's how it is. That's just how selling things is done. That's how you make money. That's how the whole thing works, okay, so can you break down why I'm talking about this as being like a really big deal, but people don't know why it's such a big deal? So can you break down why upsells are so critical for businesses who are trying to scale?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I mean, the upsells are probably the only way to scale, because if you're a one product business, you're rarely going to be able to grow. I mean, probably there are some unicorns out there, some exceptions to the rule, but overall every single business needs to have an upsell in order to grow, to scale. Otherwise, you're just every single time you're not upselling, you're selling just a single product. You're every single time you're trying to find a new client. You're basically in an endless chase of new customers are trying to get. If it's a product that has could be bought multiple times, that means that you are trying, you're waiting for the person who bought it the first time to to like stop using it or need a new one and then buy again. So you're in an endless chase of new customers rather than having a full control and being able to give them more opportunities and more offers how about, for course, creators who maybe have got like 10 different products that they're selling, but they're all low ticket, right?

Speaker 1:

I mean, how does an upsell play in for them? What kind of a difference can it make for those guys?

Speaker 2:

made like a night and day difference if their business. Because a lot of ticket offers are usually a customer acquisition offer. So in a way, you are just getting a person to have a peek into your world, into your ecosystem, to learn something, something small and important, but still not not the main thing, not everything. The upsets are really what builds the business. Like setting something for a few hundred to a few thousand to tens of thousands of dollars is where really the business grows. For a course business, so with a low ticket you're going to acquire a customer, but how many $27 eBooks should you sell to actually make a six-figure business? While if you have a few hundred dollar offers after that and a couple of them, then it really makes a difference for your business, or multiple low-ticket offers. This is also quite important when you're using order bumps, which is a whole different topic but it's part of the upsell sequence.

Speaker 1:

So give people an example If we're working with a client and they're selling a course because you mentioned a few options there, from a few hundred to a few thousand to tens of thousands right, so those are very, very different kinds of things and most people who are listening don't have the tens of thousands or the thousands of dollars offer. Now, they probably should have it, they probably should have the option as well, but most of them haven't got that. So when you're thinking about upsells, one of the things we do with a lot of clients is that you know we'll have an option for them to buy. You know we'll be selling a course for, let's say, $199. And then we'll have another course that they can buy for another $199 on the back end, kind of behind that. Now, when you're thinking about it, is that like what you're typically thinking about or are you thinking like well, really the upsell should be the thousands of dollars option? If only they had that available.

Speaker 2:

Not necessarily. If you have it, if your market, there is a product market fit for some industries, Obviously this doesn't work. It's not a universal thing. $1,000 offer or $10,000 offer would be for specific markets where it's a clear return on the investment. Now, if it's a couple of a few hundred dollar offers, that's still an upsell. The thing is, your main goal is to increase the average order value by having the right upsells, by having the right offers in the right sequence, which would give you the opportunity to get more value out of a single customer, rather than trying to get new customers Now. Depending on your market, depending on the opportunities people are taking within your market, you should price different.

Speaker 1:

So let's say somebody is selling that course. That's about the same kind of price as the main offer they've been selling. You know they're selling a course for $199, they're selling an upsell for $199. What kind of conversion rate can those people expect to get?

Speaker 2:

If you're doing that, first of all, you should probably test different pricing. I mean, you should probably test our pricing for sure. I mean what marketing theory says and that's again not universal Everything should be tested. That's why we're data-driven marketing. Everything is data-driven. It should be tested.

Speaker 2:

However, yeah, the price elasticity of the first upsell is the highest. So you can almost 10x the price of the main product in the upsell once. So if you're selling something for, let's say, $27, you can go up to $300 on the first upsell. So you can jump quite a lot in the first upsell. That's your biggest opportunity. That also depends on, again, where your market is willing to pay that money.

Speaker 2:

Now, in terms of conversion rates, that's the big question that everyone wants to figure out. What should be my upsell conversion rate? And again, not universal. But if you need a benchmark number for upsell number one, it should be somewhere around the 20%. To be more specific, I got this matrix here 20 to 25% on upsell number one and about 8 to 12% on upsell number two. Usually, upsell number two is not your main revenue driver, but it's good to have it there. And if you want to go even further, you can do a downsell. You can do a downsell for upsell number one or upsell number two, whether it could be a payment plan or just a cheaper version of a similar opportunity as the offer you're having there. The point is having multiple offers there. Whether it's upsell, whether it's called downsell, it doesn't matter. It's just giving people the ability to spend more money with you and giving them the right offer there.

Speaker 1:

Now, one of the things I think that's important is that conversion rate is likely to vary quite a lot depending on how expensive that second offer is. I've definitely seen 20% conversion rates when it's been something about the same kind of price. You know, let's say your first offer's $9 and the second offer's $229 or something kind of like that. But you were saying about, like, okay, if you have the second offer, you know sorry, the upsell is 10x the price of the first offer. What have you seen in terms of what conversion rates you've ever managed to get when it's been that kind of a jump?

Speaker 2:

10x is really the ceiling. Ceiling there I mean nothing to attend x, it's just that that's about as much as you can get away with and still be profitable. Then it's there's like a steep decline after that. But you can get up to 15 to 20 percent range with a perfect offer that fits ideally there and it's a market that it's willing to pay. When I say it's a market, it's willing to pay, that's usually markets that have a clear roi on getting that thing.

Speaker 2:

For an example, if you're selling where recently I started working with somebody that's providing education for creators who want to monetize through a specific affiliate type of marketing, now for them it makes sense to get the upsell, because if you spent a higher ticket let's say you spent a thousand dollars or something, but then you're going to start making from month 1,500, then it's a clear ROI. If you are teaching somebody how to play guitar, maybe it's not the right fit right there because it's more of a hobby industry. So you should fit it within the range that makes sense. So it depends again on the audience. It depends on who you're marketing to and what kind of an offer you're giving. But 15 to 20% on a hard ticket, going to 25% on the same range that we're selling to.

Speaker 1:

Now, if someone so you've had a client recently where what was the kind of increase you got in the conversion rate on the upsell, like how much? What percentage increase did you manage to get with that one?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that was a big win. We did almost two and a half times better with our upsell system compared to what they had before and their average previously I got. The percentage here is 7.8% and we got up to 20.1% Nice.

Speaker 1:

So big increase in conversion rate, a lot more money coming in. What kind of things do you need to put in place in order to do that Like? What should people be thinking about in terms of like, how to actually write this upsell page and what to put together First? What should people be thinking about in terms of, like, how to actually write this upsell page and what to put?

Speaker 2:

together. First, they should have an upsell page. I mean, you and I have seen so many times we're not having an upsell at all, like what is this thing? Why do I need it? I got a product. No, you need it First. That's like rule number one have an upsell. Rule number two how to make a successful upsell.

Speaker 2:

One of the things that almost nobody almost everyone does is like trying to just slap an offer that they have and put it there and hope somebody buy it, like slap it and pray. What you should do instead is do a logical sequence, a logical transition a breach, if you want to from the previous purchase to the next one. So what I do whenever I create an episode is like a macro format is acknowledge what they did, like the purchase they just made. So congratulate them. Don't create a buyer's remorse getting people to actually refund the previous purchase because you're like oh yeah, that was the wrong thing, here's the new thing that's so much better. And then get a refund on the previous one. So acknowledge the purchase they made, but you assure them that it was a great decision, Even for like. Take it a step further and make sure they love that they made a purchase, they made the right decision. Give them the good feelings, Cause I mean, we all love buying new stuff. I just bought a film camera, just came here. I love it. I mean I don't have a buyer's remorse, Don't make people hate what they just did.

Speaker 2:

Then I redirect them to the next step, which is all right. We solved this one thing. For an example, I'm going to show you how to use Photoshop, but then I redirect them to a new problem. But you don't know where to start from, or you don't know how to become advanced. Maybe that's a better one. You don't know how to become advanced. Now you've got the foundations, but you probably don't want to be like a rookie Photoshop expert. You want to be like somebody who's an expert, advanced one that can create things that wow people. So here's the next problem and here's the next solution to it.

Speaker 2:

So right into the next thing, and then the final step is really just give them a good offer. That's a one-time thing. People can only get this offer on this page only because they made the right decision on the previous step. It's called a one-time offer. It's similar to your example with Apple you did earlier, where you said like you put your credit card details and then you can just one tap, buy apps and stuff from your phone, or just tap it twice, scan your face and buy it. The same thing, the same upsell you. Basically, the credit card is there. They just need to make a very quick, simple decision to get to the next simple decision, to get to the next step, to get to the next level of their buyer journey now, if you're listening to this and you want to get hold of a template for this, if you like, I'm not quite sure what to put together in this.

Speaker 1:

I like what boris is explaining. I get the idea, but I don't know quite what to put in. What we've got is a template of the upsell page for you and all of the elements that are going to be on there, and it includes AI prompts for how to write specific elements of that page as well, and you can download that for free at datadriven, marketingco slash upsell, or you can just click the link in the description or the show notes or the pinned comment below. All right, so if somebody wants to understand, let's kind of get into the details, like what's what the whole? Into the details, like what's the whole structure of the page is, what are the different elements that somebody needs to have on their upsell page?

Speaker 2:

All right. So that's where the secret sauce is. We're going to share them. So there's about 13 elements total that we have in an upsell page, and you can be a bit more detailed there. You can put a lot more stuff, but these are like the macro right, the four-step system which, say it again, it's reassure, direct offer. So how this goes At the top, we always acknowledge where they are, what they're seeing, Because when you make a purchase, the last thing I mean you probably expect to see an order confirmation page and randomly you see a new video of a person that you just bought from them. Am I on the wrong page? What am I seeing? So, acknowledge that, Congratulations, you made a successful purchase. Reassure them that they're on the right page, but they're seeing a special offer because they just took action. Then, with upsell number one, we usually like to go with a VSL. That's my own preference having a VSL on upsell number one, because it's the highest converting upsell.

Speaker 1:

Just let everybody know what a VSL is.

Speaker 2:

A VSL. Yeah, that's called a video sales letter. It's a sales letter in a video format in a way. So you are explaining the offer in the form of video. The video should have the same, almost identical, structure as the page. So if you're like, how do I make the VSL? Just you do the same thing, but on a video Acknowledge where they are, what they're seeing, reassure them and then proceed into the next offer. So you got a VSL and then you got a TSL. So TSL is a text sell letter.

Speaker 2:

So the first upsell is a hybrid between a VSL and a TSL. The second upsell we usually go with a TSL Only. The reason is that people are at this point they're not buying as much. Conversion is lower and people get irritated if they are just seeing more and more videos. So you can just get to the point. With the second upsell, but the first one, you can really expand it. So VSL, and then you have the new offer. That's where you're going to the new problem identification. So you're like we solved the problem, congratulations.

Speaker 2:

Here's the next thing to help you either get to the result faster, make it easier, or get another thing that would help you get further along your journey and then you go more into the sales page format. You have the new pain point, the new solution introduction, how the two solutions work. So this is very specific for upsell how? Solution number one, the offer number one, so the main offer again, and this new upsell offer how do they combine together? If you're able to combine the two, it would make the offer so much more profitable and that's how we got to that 20 plus percent conversion rate, just because we were able to expand really on. If you get this thing and you're adding this second thing to it, it becomes a lot better for you as an experience. You're going to get a lot further in your journey. Then the mechanism so how does the thing work? So why does it work? How? How does the thing work? So why does it work? How is it different from everything else they've done before? That's like more of marketing 101. Then you present them the offer, the offer being how is what they're seeing right now is special? So they're seeing it only on this page, only once. If they close it, they probably won't be able to see that offer ever again anywhere else. So it's really a special offer on this page, only this. So it's really a special offer on this page only. This creates a lot of urgency and also scarcity around this offer to to decide whether they want it right now, because if they don't want it they will never see it again. You present the offer, you present everything inside the offer the value stack, the so-called value stack like everything that's inside everything they're gonna get. Then you put some scarcity there, urgency, that being like it's a one-time offer.

Speaker 2:

What we like to do next, and what I really like to do next, is future pacing. So how would your future look like if you continue with your main product only versus your main product plus this upsell? This is very tricky. You can mess it up big times here and get a lot of refunds. The without version shouldn't be an awful thing. It shouldn't be like a negative pain point. It should be like very good but not exceptional. The exceptional is the upsell added there.

Speaker 2:

That's step 11. We didn't listen, but that's the 11th step. Then you got the risk reversal, which is usually a money back guarantee. But you can expand it with a lot more stuff, like not only money but we've proven to work Like you got results of other people we're going to. I mean you can expand a lot on the risk reversal. If you go with money back guarantee, though only, you're in a good spot. So do that if you're just starting out. And then you got final choice at the end.

Speaker 2:

The call to action usually for my upsells is almost identical. It's a final choice. The two options visibly made as bundles, especially for courses. You can create them as images, one without it and one with it, and then they have two buttons. Oh, I don't want this. I understand it's the last, the only time I see see this offer. I still want to decline it. And then the accept button or the call to action you want them to hit as yes, I want to get this together with my offer and make sure you have explicit text set at the bottom. By clicking this button, you'll be automatically charged X amount of money. So make sure you're explicit and people are not like confused where this charge came from later on.

Speaker 1:

All right, I'm going to recap and just check we've got. I've got everything here. So the four main elements were acknowledge, reassure, and then what was it? Transition, and then offer.

Speaker 2:

So you can say transition, that's a good way to put it. I say redirect, redirect, okay, cool.

Speaker 1:

So those are the four big parts, and then the elements that I got down and tell me what I've missed. Here was the pain point, the solution. Show how that combines together the mechanism, the offer, why it's special, the fact it's only on this one page. Urgency and scarcity. The value stack. Any more urgency, then future pacing, risk, reversal and then the final choice. What did I miss out?

Speaker 2:

You missed the initial first three steps, which is acknowledge the sale, reassure them and have the upsell there.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so acknowledge, reassure, redirect and then all of that stuff that I said kind of comes under the offer heading.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, Redirect is the problem. Identification is usually the redirect, and then everything else goes into the offer. Got it Just operate.

Speaker 1:

The new thing, redirect, is like pain point kind of this. Then you're moving over, got it okay. So that's the overall structure and you know, if you just want to download the template, then click the link in the description on the show notes and you'll be able to grab that. Okay, now someone's got an upsell in place what? And it's not converting great. Where would you, in terms of things to test? Is it the copy? Is it the price? What do you tend to see is a good place to start?

Speaker 2:

In our team we love the 80-20 rule. We usually we try to implement it as much as possible because it's one of the big rules out there that's like universal one, where you implement it, it makes a lot of difference. And the 20 for upsells, for me it's the offer. I mean, if you find the right offer it would bring you a lot more results. If you change this thing, it would bring you the 80 of results and then you can optimize the copy and then you can optimize the, the design or try different pricing. But if the offer doesn't fit, it wouldn't make any sense.

Speaker 1:

So if people don't want this thing in particular, there's no amount of copy you can write you that they will make it work when you say change the offer, the impression I get you're talking about is changing like what product that you have in there, rather than changing some of the other stuff that goes as part of the offer. Like you know, bonuses, guarantees, risk reversal, that kind of thing. You mean, just like what is it that you're actually selling as the main offer here?

Speaker 2:

yeah, okay, yes, offer is like it became quite a vague term nowadays, but yeah, I meant the product. I think that's the right word, the product that people would like to get. Just a quick example if people are we're having this language learning teacher, they're selling courses. Let's say they sell a course for a2 level student, it wouldn't make sense to sell them and like a c1 or like native english-speaking courses and upsell one, because there is a very big jump between the deal. It's a2, upsell number one should be b1, I guess, just going one step ahead. So yeah, I mean it should be a logical jump from the main offer to the upsell one and if people are not getting it, it's probably that they don't see the logic or they can't identify the next problems and you should be the one identifying for them and presenting it.

Speaker 1:

Now you mentioned a few things earlier I want to go back to in terms of figuring out what that product should be, and you've just said one of them which was like the next product Someone's bought A2, now let's sell them the B1 course, that makes total sense. But there was some other stuff you'd said earlier around something that allows them to do it faster or more easily or something like that, or something that kind of combines the offer. Can you talk through some of the options there so people can start to think like, oh, I could set this as my upsell or I could make this, or I could use this existing thing I have?

Speaker 2:

Yeah. So in a way, you'd like to make it faster, easier or easier for them. What that means is you can learn X thing for 90 days, but with this thing added, you can cut it down to 45 days or 30 days. It could be done for your templates. It could be recently, could be some kind of an AI conversation guide or something AI related where AI helps you. It could be really anything that's helping them minimize the effort that they need to put in. So if it's an ebook, it could be. Let's say it's an ebook tool that has the fundamentals. Well, it could be also a 30 day guide where you implement the book day by day so you're not lost. You have the actual guide, you have the book, you have the guide. That's what Russell Brunson does with his offers for books, where you go through the days Russell Brunson being the founder of ClickFunnels for everyone who doesn't know but basically, you go through the days and you implement the book systematically so it gets you to the end result faster and you don't have to think about what you should do today. You have an exact step-by-step plan. That's one thing to do.

Speaker 2:

It could be a course that accelerates the results to a further level. So that's the one we mentioned, let's say somebody's. That's one of the big success we have with selling an aspirational skill. So somebody is still learning the basics of I use a Photoshop example. Or you could be selling an advanced course where they're not there, but they have the aspiration to be advanced, because nobody wants to be just a beginner when they would become advanced. That's up to them and how they implement. However, everyone wants to become the best version of the skill that they want to learn. For course creators I mean this especially works for course creators. So that's one and then another one will be just solving a very specific problem that's coming. So, for example, have a dog training course and you can upsell them a course that's how to like, how to remove any anxiety from your dog, for an example, or how to train your dog for a very specific skill. So it could be like a very niche specific skills. After that, your market wants okay, cool.

Speaker 1:

So a few things I got down there could just be the next obvious product in the list and in the order of things like the. You're doing the basic, now you're going to sell you the intermediate. You're buying the intermediate, now let's sell you the advanced. It could be something to make it be faster or easier for them, so that might be done for you templates, ai guides, a guide that takes them through how to do this thing systematically. So you've sold the, the, the training or the ebook or the course, and now you're going to give them a thing that allows them to implement it more systematically could be something aspirational. So getting the advanced course what about it could be another problem that's likely to come up.

Speaker 1:

I think one thing that sometimes interesting is um thing you solve a problem that the first course is going to create. You know like I'm going to make you so much money. You're going to now need to know how to manage all of that money. So why don't you now buy the course about money management and where you're going to invest all of your money, or something like that? And that's like you're going to have a new problem, which is a better problem to have because you'll solve the first one, you'll be richer or you'll be healthier or whatever. But then you're going to need this other thing, and what I quite like with that one is it implies you've got so much confidence that the first thing is going to work so well that this second problem is going to come up. So that kind of helps with reassuring people about the first thing they bought. What about selling like, if someone's selling a course? What about selling coaching? As the upsell? Does that tend to fit?

Speaker 2:

It kind of fits in the getting there faster, getting there easier. It also one more upsell. That's not very popular in the course industry but almost everyone who ever bought supplements has seen that one. It's like more of the same. You get a bottle of supplements, then the next page is get three more bottles for the price of two. How this fits for courses is probably for some industries, like get my Photoshop templates I keep on using that example but get my Photoshop templates and then upsell to is like get 40 more templates. That could be one that could be used. You can test it out.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I was chatting with somebody once and he was selling t-shirts and he thought he'd put us the upsell. He had to see upsell some more t-shirts and he thought, well, how about a hoodie? Cause that's like another bit of clothing, that kind of similar to a t-shirt kind of thing, and it didn't sell thing that they already tried to get. So that's quite fun. Okay, it's trickier in the core space, but it can work, because we've got a client who was selling challenges and then the upsell was the whole year's worth of challenges. So you've just bought a month's, a one month challenge. Well, you might then want to do the whole year's worth.

Speaker 1:

Or if you're selling a membership, you've bought a month's membership access and it's on a monthly basis. Why not upgrade to the annual one and you get a discount? You get more of the same thing but at a cheaper price. Or you go from monthly to quarterly or quarterly to annual or something like that, and that can work really well. Okay, so we've talked through the template in terms of the structure and if people want to get hold of that, they can. They can download the, the guide for that, and we've talked through what the offer might actually be, how to kind of come up with ideas for that. What else should people know about upsells? What else do we need to talk people through?

Speaker 2:

They should definitely know what not to do. Yeah, they shouldn't ignore. They shouldn't ignore the fact where people are and what they're seeing and what the step is. That's probably the biggest mistake you need to realize. The person just gave you their credit card details and trust you with their money. You should make sure they feel comfortable. You shouldn't make it like a bad experience. You shouldn't make too many upsells or make it so hard to go through the upsells, like make five upsells, for an example, I'd probably go with three and that's like one downsell and that's a stretch. You should make an awful experience like an awful user experience where they start refunding the main product. You can see that happening if you see that people are closing the page rather than clicking the buttons. So that means that, let's say, 50 people bought the main product, then 50 people saw upsell number one, but then 25 people saw upsell number two. That means 25 people just closed the page. They were not sure where they are and what they're seeing. That's a bad user experience that could increase refunds.

Speaker 1:

That's something they shouldn't do. I'd say another thing people shouldn't do is just ignore this and not set up an upsell, and that's actually the one I see the most often is. People are just like yeah, that's a good idea, I should do that, and then they just don't do that and they just don't have anything in place at all. And, um, yeah, I've been working with a friend who's in a not selling courses in a service business and he's like selling, he will help you to recruit a team member right from job rack, job racke, and it's like a done with you service. It's like quite high touch, they're doing a lot of work for you, and it's like I don't know five or six grand, something like that, I forget. And the upsell is buy three jobs and I think you get a slight discount if you do that, and it's like and that's working great, and he's making a bunch of money off of it. It's just like, yeah, this is the thing that's like, and people in course space are just not doing it. They're not got that upsell in place at all.

Speaker 1:

So I think the bigger issue is like people just not even setting this up at all. I think you're right. You need to make sure it isn't just like aggressively salesy. But I think most people listening to this what's a bigger issue is that they're not nearly salesy enough. You know they're not offering anything to buy at that stage. Rather than being like, oh, what's this trash you just bought from me, you should be buying this extra expensive thing instead. Instead of that, people are just like that's the extreme right, that's bad. I think most people they're just not doing anything. They're not selling a single thing. Okay, any other mistakes you see people make?

Speaker 2:

yeah. So, assuming you have an upsell, you have an upsell and assuming that's true, then the next thing is don't make it an awful experience for the people. That's the main thing. And then don't assume that people buying from you once means they're gonna keep on buying from you. There is a higher chance to have a customer being a repeated customer. It's way easier to get someone to buy twice than finding a new person to buy for the first time.

Speaker 2:

However, don't just go with assumptions that I'm going to put anything there and they're just going to buy it. You still need to explain what's the thing that they're seeing, why this is a new problem and why you need a new solution. Like you said, john, why this new? The course you bought, like, let's say, course for losing weight. This is a course for losing weight. The next thing is how to maintain that new weight you've lost. It should present a new problem because there is a yo-yo effect and you're just going to bring it again back to kilos and whatnot. It should present a new problem. It it should present a new problem. It should be clearly stated why this makes logical sense for them to buy it. Upsell number one, compared to the main product is way more logical as a purchase. Compared to the main product. It's a bit more emotional. The main product, you can put a lot more pain points story, et cetera, et cetera. However, upsell one is a very logical buy.

Speaker 1:

You should make a very logical argument why they should get it buy, you should make a very logical argument why they should get it. If you want that template that we talked about, go to datadrivenmarketingco. Slash upsell or click the link in the show notes or description. If you found the interview useful and you want to get future episodes, subscribe wherever you listened. Thanks so much for listening, as always, and Boris, thanks so much for coming on.

Speaker 2:

Thanks for having me, John.

Speaker 1:

Appreciate it.