How To Lose A Sure-fire $8,000 Sale
The Amplified Impact Podcast
June 22nd, 2023
Today, I want to spill the beans on one of my favorite tricks for leveling up in life, whether you’re a writer, entrepreneur, or just about anything else.
Lately, I’ve been deep into this thing called funnel hacking.
Basically, it’s like being a detective and snooping around other creators’ businesses to uncover their secrets.
From the way they create content to how they craft killer calls-to-action, I’m all up in their funnels, trying to crack the code.
But by paying attention to what grabs my attention and gets me clicking, I can reverse engineer their tactics and use them to my advantage.
Let me tell you about a recent adventure in funnel hacking.
So, I’ve been following this awesome content creator who’s got a killer book and an amazing podcast.
When they mentioned their coaching program, I was genuinely interested in soaking up their knowledge.
Their call-to-action was a simple “Shoot me a DM.”
Seems easy but instead of giving me a direct link to buy, they took me on a whole journey.
They had two coaching options: one-on-one for $250,000 a year and group coaching for a more reasonable $8,000 a year…talk about price anchoring.
By throwing that big number out first, the second option suddenly seemed like a bargain.
Long story short, this whole experience taught me some valuable lessons.
Funnel hacking is like having a backstage pass to success, but you gotta keep it real with your customers.
Answer their questions, be transparent, and don’t dance around the truth.
So, if you’re an entrepreneur or salesperson, take notes and avoid the pitfalls that can turn a surefire sale into a missed opportunity.
TWEETABLE QUOTE:
“The most surefire way to upset a customer to lose the sale is to not actually answer the question they are asking.”- Anthony Vicino
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Episode Transcript:
Anthony Vicino [00:00:00]:
What’s up, guys? Welcome back to the podcast. Now, I’m gonna share with you one of my favorite ways of improving pretty much anything in life, whether that’s becoming a better writer, trying to become a better entrepreneur, a better creator, whatever it is. On a previous episode, we talked about this quote from Picasso who was famously said, good artists copy, great artists deal. And I’ve really taken that to heart over the years, because I think instead of trying to recreate the wheel from scratch every single time, it’s far easier just to look at what others are doing to find success and then kind of model your behaviors off of that. Take inspiration as much as possible so that you’re not just having to self generate these ideas out of the void. And the reason this is Top of Mind, I want to talk about it today is in my pursuit of becoming a better entrepreneur, better salesperson, I spend a lot of time looking at other creators, other business people, at their businesses. And then I do what’s called funnel hacking, where I try to understand the mechanics of their system, whether that from the very beginning of the content that they create, how did they create it, why are they editing in this way? Their copywriting in the descriptions, their call to actions. When I actually click on that call to action or DM, like, what happens next? And I like to go through funnels and figure out what’s working, what doesn’t work.
Anthony Vicino [00:01:25]:
And for me to know what works or doesn’t work is a tricky one because you don’t have access to their analytics to be able to say, okay, how effective was this call to action? Truthfully, in the grand scheme of the five other call to actions, they a B tested, right? But what you can do is you can look at what was effective for you, like what grabbed your attention and got you interested enough or intrigued enough to click on the thing. Right? And I think you, as a good proxy for the customer, that’s a pretty safe place to start. So I try to become very, very aware when I’m scrolling on social media, is when I get hit with an ad, what gets me to stop scrolling and what gets me intrigued enough to click and move through their funnel. And by just becoming aware of myself as the recipient of their attempt to influence, I can then reverse engineer that stuff into my own processes. So I think that’s a really great way to learn and develop your own systems, your own skills. And I was sort of doing this the other day, but not really not with the same intention. I was genuinely interested in this product. I’d been following this creator for a while.
Anthony Vicino [00:02:29]:
His content’s really great. He has a great book, a great podcast that I listen to. I’m not going to names or anything. I’m not going to put anybody on blast here, but he puts out really great stuff. And he said something about a coaching program, and I was like, Cool. I’d love to work with this guy. I would love to learn from him, pick his brain and get access to his information, because I’m on this constant quest to learn more and more and more. And so his call to action was, shoot me a DM.
Anthony Vicino [00:02:53]:
And this was all on Instagram, by the way, so I shoot him a DM. And truthfully, if he had just given me the link at that moment, I would have clicked on it and I would have gone, bought the thing. I just would have. I didn’t really need to be qualified. I didn’t really need to be brought along on any kind of sales journey. I was just a hot buyer ready to go. And I think there’s a lesson to be learned here, which is remove friction for those people who are just going to push the button and buy the thing without having to do any extra work, make it available for them, but then also realize that other people, other customers, they’re going to need to be taken on a journey. So the process that they had designed wasn’t really for a guy like me who was just coming in, like, just take my money.
Anthony Vicino [00:03:38]:
I don’t want to go through all this. I don’t need to be convinced. I make quick decisions. I want the thing. But because they put me through the process, it gave me more time to sit and reflect. And in the process, they managed to take what would have been a surefire sale and lose it. And this was about an $8,000 product, because as I was going through this guy’s funnel, I was like, tell me about the coaching. What are your options here? And he’s like, I got two packages.
Anthony Vicino [00:04:03]:
You can either work with me one on one, or you can do the small group coaching. I was like, okay, what do these look like? The price point on the one on one coaching was about $250,000 for a single year, which is like a ridiculously large sum of money. Granted, he’s great at what he does, so he can probably get people to pay that. I wasn’t interested in paying that much to work with the guy. So the group coaching option was $8,000 for a year. Much, much more in line with what I was expecting to pay. But here’s the thing. This is the first lesson to learn.
Anthony Vicino [00:04:35]:
This is all about price anchoring. It’s all about setting expectations when you come in, and the first thing that you propose is, here’s my premium, top of the line offer. And it’s an exorbitant number. He doesn’t actually probably get people to really take that offer very much. That’s not his goal. His goal is to make the second offer look very, very small by comparison, right? So by throwing out $250,000 for this product, now when he throws out 8000 over here, that seems way more reasonable. If he had said the one on one coaching is $10,000 and the group coaching is 8000, well now I have to do like this mental jujitsu. So that’s the first lesson.
Anthony Vicino [00:05:09]:
That was a really interesting one which is just price anchoring to the extremes then it is very effective. But the next thing that happened then was we went through the process and he sent me the link and I was good to go after answering a few questions. And at this point I was just genuinely curious. Again, I love the funnel hack and understand how other people are doing their system. So I just asked him, I said, hey, by the way, just curious, is this actually you or is this somebody on your team like a VA, handling your DMs and doing a set and close type of process. It was just a simple innocent question. However they answered it, I didn’t care if it was a VA on the other side of the line. That is what I would have expected.
Anthony Vicino [00:06:01]:
If you are going to be selling a $250,000 product, you’re probably not hanging out in your DMs all day answering just every question that comes through, right? So my expectation was this is not the guy, I’m not talking to the actual guy here. He has asked me these questions about myself, about my business to qualify me and all this stuff, but it is not him. He does not know me yet at this point. So I was just asking and there was no gotcha here. I wasn’t going to be upset one way or the other. Like I expected it to not be him. But the way that they answered the question pretty much guaranteed that I would never do business with him because what they said was I share all of that in the program. I share all of that in the program.
Anthony Vicino [00:06:47]:
And I was like, well you just answered it, right? Because if it was you, you would say no bra, it’s me, I’m here. So by saying I answer all that in the program, what you’ve effectively done is you’ve not answered my question and also answered it simultaneously, right? And so at this point I was just like, now I got to know. Now I got to push you to at least accept or acknowledge the question and answer it. So I said so you’re saying this is actually you question mark. And instead of again, I gave him another opportunity to say no, actually this is VA, this is somebody on this person’s team and you’re going to get access to him when the coaching program starts, whatever. Instead, what they did was really interesting and it probably would have worked on majority of people, but it does not work on me because I understand how funnels work. So they sent me a voice message from the guy who runs the programs. The guy that I’m asking them, is this you? And on the voicemail or on the voice message, he says my name.
Anthony Vicino [00:08:01]:
And then he makes some vague allusions to, hey, all these questions that you’re asking, you’re going to get answered inside the program. It’s going to be awesome. You’re going to love it. And I can tell by the way he answers the question that he did not know what my actual question was. Somebody on his team, the person who’s handling his DM, probably reached out to him and said, hey, I need you to shoot a quick voice message for a guy named Anthony. He has some questions. Let him know that they’ll be answered inside the program. Right? And so they send that.
Anthony Vicino [00:08:27]:
And again, I’m like, if this was you, you would have just said, yeah, this is me in the DMs. You wouldn’t have taken some time to do the voicemail. And if you did do The Voicemail, you would have been like, hey, yo, what’s up, bro? This is actually me. Right? It wasn’t any of that. And so what ended up happening was I’ve decided I’m not going to do business with this person because I’m simply irritated as a customer that they did not answer my actual question. They danced around it with politicians, with politicians speak where you answered the question in a non answer way because they were afraid that the truth would turn me off, when in reality, the truth I knew the truth. It was them not accepting or acknowledging the truth to me that upset me. And so the lesson here for us as entrepreneurs, as business people, is the most surefire way to upset a customer to lose the sale is to not actually answer the question they are asking.
Anthony Vicino [00:09:28]:
And it’s that simple. Lead with authenticity, integrity, and transparency and just address the question that the people are asking. Even if you’re afraid that that’s going to make you look bad and lose the sale, I guarantee it’s better than jumping through this rigamarole trying to present this image, because I know exactly how their funnel works. Now. I’m smart enough to have figured it out. I’ve been around this block enough times. I understand all the different ways that this can work. And so all they really did was annoy me and take a surefire sale, a surefire $8,000 sale and completely lose it.
Anthony Vicino [00:10:04]:
So take that lesson. Let’s try to become better entrepreneurs and business people, salespeople in our craft to take this to heart and say, okay, what do I need to change about my system? Where could I be pissing off my customers because I’m not actually answering their questions. And as always, guys and gals, I appreciate you being here. I’m psyched to see you back around these parts tomorrow. But until then, stay hyper focused, my friend.
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