How To Create Irresistible Offers with Deadline Funnel Founder Jack Born
“Everyone likes to buy but nobody likes to be sold to”. Have you heard that phrase before? ‘Purchase facilitation’ 
works better than ‘selling’. And a large part of facilitating a purchase is having an irresistible offer. Creating irresistible offers is an art. In this conversation, Jack Born — the founder of Deadline Funnel — and I discuss the elements that make up an irresistible offer — one of which is genuine scarcity. In this conversation, Jack explains how his software Deadline Funnel creates genuine scarcity. We also talk about several other elements that make up a successful offer.
Links Mentioned:
- www.deadlinefunnel.com
- www.jackborn.com
- www.GetMeToDone.com
- www.Productiveinsights.com
- www.YouTube.com/ProductiveInsights
- https://productiveinsights.com/the-eisenhower-matrix/
Book Mentioned:
Related Episodes:
- 186. How To Use The 80 20 Principle For Business Growth By Working Effectively with Perry Marshall
- 140. Andre Chaperon — Email Marketing Genius And Creator of Auto Responder Madness
- 176. The Alter Ego Effect With Todd Herman
- 170. Ryan Deiss From Digital Marketer Reveals The 5-Step Conversion Funnel That Turbo-Charges Your Business Growth
Ash Roy and Jack Born Video Transcript (This transcript has been auto-generated. Artificial Intelligence is still in the process of perfecting itself. There may be some errors in transcription):
Ash Roy (00:00):
You may be the best and write beautifully, but if it’s the wrong words or it’s addressing the wrong problem, it’s not going to work. So I really think copywriting is about really understanding your customer and empathizing with them.
Absolutely. Well said.
Ash Roy (00:20):
Welcome to the productive insights podcast. This is Ash Roy, the founder of productiveinsights.com and the host of the productive insights podcast. If you’re watching this on YouTube, please do subscribe and like this video so that more people can get to it. And if you’re listening to it on iTunes, I highly recommend you watch it on YouTube. You can access it@youtube.com forward slash productive insights. I’m very excited to welcome Jack Born a person I’ve known for some time now who’s moved from the US to Australia in the last few months, about a year ago now. Is that right, Jack?
Yeah, it’s almost, we’re coming up on two years. Yep.
Ash Roy (00:55):
Oh wow. Okay. Jack is the founder of deadline funnel and I’ve been following Jack’s work for some time now. I really like his work. I like his approach. I feel he’s somebody who’s authentic and has a very nice approach to business, so welcome to the productive insights podcast, Jack,
It’s great to be here. Ash,
Ash Roy (01:13):
Great to have you, man. I really appreciate the kind of content you have put together and particularly the software that you have that is deadline funnel and it ties in beautifully with what we’re going to be talking about today, which is offers, offer creation, and particularly offer creation in this challenging environment we find ourselves in today with the Coronavirus pandemic or the COVID 19 crisis, whatever you want to call it. Jack, let’s start by talking a little bit about why good quality offers are important to small business owners and how a good quality offer can help a business, particularly in today’s environment where people are finding themselves short on cash flow and there’s a lot of uncertainty around.
Yeah, so let’s, let’s leave the current environment for just a moment. Let’s roll back the clock several decades. If you go back to the old school, traditional direct response, the legends, the masters, they would tell you the two big levers that control whether a promotion is going to be profitable isn’t so much the copy initially as it is the list that you’ve chosen, the list that you’re going to. All right, so we’re talking about direct mail. That’s how far back we’re going. So direct mail, actually something sent in the mail. What list are you sending it to and what’s the offer? The copy, of course, is important, but those two things are critical. So the audience, so in today’s world, this would be something like your Facebook targeting, right? Who are you targeting, but also what the offer is? So clearly the copy you and I both know the copy is extremely important.
If you’re going to tinker with something and get the highest leverage, one of the areas where you can really dramatically change things is with your offer. And one of the big misconceptions that people have about there, whether it’s a physical product or an online course, they can fuse that. Well, that is my offer. Like that’s my thing. This is what I sell. And that’s actually not the offer. There are so many other aspects to the offer. So one simple example would be the guarantee. So you know, Domino’s pizza, you know, regardless of what you think of the quality of their pizza, they’ve, they grew tremendously on the back of a really powerful guarantee. I mean that guarantee changed it from just another pizza a, with a nice name and a good logo to something that just kept growing and growing and growing. People wanted that guarantee.
So that’s just one example. And there are ways that you can craft. The guarantee is it’s no longer really just good enough to go 30 days money-back guarantee because people are like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like it doesn’t even register with people anymore. So we can spend 30 and then we’re not going to, but we could spend 30 minutes talking about just different types of guarantees and how to express your guarantee. I mean it’s, you can dive that deep on it. So don’t think yet guaranteed. Got it. I have a guarantee for my product. How are you expressing the guaranteed? Is it a guarantee that grabs attention? Is it a guarantee that, that when you say it, it reiterates the value of why someone should buy it. So it’s not just what the guarantee is, it’s how you communicate it. There are all sorts of other things.
There are payment options. So especially let’s, let’s bring it forward to right now. So this is something that could really dramatically impact your uptake, your conversion rate for your offers. You may have been able to sell to your audience and offer something at full price or maybe you know, two, two relatively equal payments, you know, but now in the current environment, just depending on what audience you’re selling to, it might make sense for you to take a look at an offer where it’s a six pay or a 12 pay. So in other words, you’re breaking it out over a certain number of months. Or maybe it’s what’s called a soft offer. What’s a soft offer? Well, a soft offer is where it’s you know, free for seven days or free for 30 days and then it rolls. Maybe it’s full payment after 30 days, but it gives them an opportunity to kick the tires and give it a test drive and try it out.
Do you know? So there’s no silver bullet of, you know, this is the way to structure your payments, but you should know that there’s a lot of different ways just then just in the way that you currently structure payments and how you structure your payments goes into your offer. One more thing that I’ll mention real quick, but we’re certainly not done with, Oh, here we go. Bonuses. So that’s a huge thing. So in addition to what it is that you’re selling, whether it’s the online course, whether it’s a physical product, your offer actually encompasses more than just that, more than the guarantee is more than how they pay. It’s also the bonuses. What else do you get? You know, including things like is free shipping included? Do you get six days free of the prime membership when you buy this certain package of books? So there are different ways to bundle things in where people feel like people are getting more value and they feel like they’re getting more value, but you’re getting more people saying, yes, I’m going to order this.
And then another. So I think we’re on the fourth item. So when the, one of the other things that are really important and near to near and dear to my heart is the importance of having a deadline. So if you have a special offer, so whether this is, so there’s a couple of different ways to structure your special offer. Is it special because after a certain date, it’s not, it’s going to be on hold and you can’t order it for some time? Or is it a special offer because you’ve got, it’s black Friday and you’ve got a special bundle of products and special pricing, or it’s your birthday. You know, there’s a whole bunch of different reasons why you can have a special offer or someone just joined your list, someone just signed up and joined your list or join your Facebook group. That could be a reason to say, everyone who joins my list gets an opportunity to jump on board and buy my flagship product at 25% off.
But the key is you need to have a deadline. So it’s absolutely vital for you to have a deadline for your offer. Because if I come to you and I say, Hey, I’ve got this amazing deal, it’s got this, it’s got this, and you can pay for it over 12, 12 months and you’re really fascinated by, by the offer. And I go, you know, and by the way, just let me know whenever it is that you feel like you’re ready to buy and it’s just left out there, then there’s no deadline. There’s no urgency to take action on that. So that’s a really key component is that you express. So first of all, you have to have a product that someone wants. None of this is going to, I should’ve started with this. None of this, including our amazing software. None of this is going to help sell a product that just shouldn’t be like, has no desire with an audience.
So, in other words, our favorite sayings that I learned from Perry Marshall, not sure where he got it or if he came up with it as you can’t steer a parked car. , another variation of that is you can’t multiply zero. So in other words, if you were getting absolutely zero sales because no one actually wants this product, none of what I’m talking about is going to help. But if you are getting sales, if you are getting some sort of feedback from you, from your audience, then what I’m sharing with you could help tremendously. So you make a special offer on a product that people want. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a discount, it could be better payment terms, it can be a better guarantee, it could be better bonuses, it could be all the above without even dropping the price. In fact, the payment terms could be more than actually what you were charging for before. So you could actually raise the price in certain circumstances. But when you put this special offer together, you need to have a deadline because if I can come and get it any time, then what’s really special about it? It’s a different offer, but it’s not a special offer.
Ash Roy (08:09):
Few points I want to make that came up as you were talking, first of all, when you talked about soft offers free for 30 days and then it goes into a paid. Is that the same as a freemium plan where they call it free? That goes to a premium.
Some people get tied up with terms in the software world freemium in my mind, and I think a lot of people would agree with me, freemium is where there’s a version of that software or whatever it is that you’re selling that is free forever. So, so for example, you know some, some sort of software where they say, look, here’s the free plan and you don’t ever have to upgrade.
Ash Roy (08:43):
Oh yes. Right, right. Got it.
As you use it, our logo is all over your stuff and you don’t have these extra features. But if you don’t want to pay and you’re willing to have our branding on your stuff and you’re willing to have like only the ability to create, you know, so there are limitations around. Yeah, exactly. And so you’re given full like you’re, you’re given the opportunity to use. You can use a software until the end of time unless they close it down, which a lot of companies end up eventually closing it down, but a lot of companies will have it open for many, many years where you can be on this free plan and never ever, ever, ever pay if you’re willing to deal with the limitations.
Ash Roy (09:20):
You raised a couple of other points which I wanted to mention. Perry Marshall was a guest on this podcast on episode 186 and he shared some great tips and thank you for introducing me to him a few months ago, Jack, I appreciate that. So definitely if you’re listening to this, check out productiveinsights.com/186 the other person I want to mention who is really good at creating offers along with using what I consider to be an ethical copy or ethical deadlines, is our common friend Andre Chaperon. He was on episode 140 and that’s again productiveinsights.com/140 something else that I’ve found useful, Jack is in terms of my membership program, I’m planning to roll out new pricing soon, and at the moment it’s only 99 us dollars a month, which is very cheap. I wanted to increase my prices, but I didn’t want to just make it unavailable to everybody.
Ash Roy (10:09):
So what I’ve done is I’ve created a tiered offering, so the $99 program for new members will offer much less than I’m currently offering the founding members, and then there’s a next level up and then there’s the next level up yet again. And each of those have progressively more value. I heard Todd Herman, I’m pretty sure it was Todd who said this, who also has been on the podcast. He’s a legend. I think he mentioned in one of his talks somewhere that if a person sees three prices on a page, they are more likely to compare but windows three prices and they’re more likely to choose one of those three verses if they just see one price on the page, they’re more likely to compare that price to the previous price they saw in some other scenario to another product. So that was an interesting perspective.
Ash Roy (10:57):
We’ve seen McDonald’s have that, you know, the small, medium, large, and we’ve also seen how effectively they’ve used the, would you like fries with that to upsize or upsell? If I understand it correctly, they don’t make as much profit on the burgers as they do on the fries because I believe it costs them tiny amount to make those fries. But it’s a very easy, simple upsell. But the profit margin on those fries is massive, these are useful ways of offering value. I’m not suggesting you create valueless upsells, but it is also important to consider the fact that value is what the customer perceives. And it always has to be about how the customer sees it. So what is valuable to the customer and what is easy for you to provide to them that is valuable to the customer is a great idea for a bonus.
Yeah, absolutely. As with so many things, I mean we could talk about a wide variety of marketing topics and someone could come along and point out a scenario, multiple scenarios where that specific tactic or strategy was used in a very unethical way a by an unscrupulous person. And I can point out a way that it was used in a very, very helpful way. So let’s talk about upsell. So for example, one of my passions, like sometimes I think it’s easier for me to think about like what do I spend my money on? So as my wife would tell you, I spend a tremendous amount of my disposable income, on cutting equipment. So I now that I live in Australia, I’ve gotten hooked to like some Michael mains, which is someone else that you should have on your podcast.
Ash Roy (12:23):
Trying to get him on for ages to talk about all these as well.
I talked to him multiple times a week. He got, he got me addicted to kiting and, and I, and I thank him weekly for doing so. But let’s get to the point. So the point is that kiting is one of those sports where there’s you, you can always buy more kites and more gear and there are different types of boards and there are foils and like all sorts of stuff. So picture that I’m going to, you know, you know, so back when I was just getting into the sport and I wanted to, to get a custom board made, the guy, the guy was saying, look, while you’re here. So I had to drive to the gold coast. So this is two hours away from where I live. Okay. Custom boards being made as my first board. I’m all excited now the guy could say, Ooh, you know, I don’t want to, I don’t want to seem like I’m too pushy.
I don’t want to offer him anything else. I’m just going to let him leave. And then I would get home and I wouldn’t have a leash. I wouldn’t have fins. I wouldn’t have a bag protective bag for my board. But I was glad because right around the corner was his guys like, look, I basically ain’t going to give you my prices. Plus, you know, an extra 15 bucks like, like while you’re here, so why don’t you grab a bag? Why don’t you grab fins? Why don’t you grab a leash like while you’re here? Absolutely. I’m like, thank you, man. That’s so awesome that you would, that you would do that. And so I’m getting a special deal while I’m there. I’m sure if I called them up now and said, Hey, I need some more fins, he’s not going to give me the same deal that I got when I first picked up his $800 board.
So you know at the time of sale it’s yes, people are more open to adding on purchases. You could use that as a way to just load them up with stuff or you could use that as an opportunity to think about, okay, what are they going to need that they actually truly are going to like in their journey? Like here’s one of the things, let me step back for a second. This is a really important philosophy. I tell my team over and over and over again that no one woke up today saying, gosh, I hope someone has a software that is on a monthly or annual payment subscription because I just like, my credit card is totally good. I just like, I really want to want to buy something today, but what they do is they wake up and they go, God, I wish, I wish I could just crack the code on figuring out how to make my Facebook ads work.
Gosh, I wish that I wasn’t so dependent on launches. I wish that I could still launch, but it wasn’t like the only thing that made my business survive. Gosh, I wish I had more cash flow so I could hire some of these people and build out a team. Like these are the things that people want. Now. There are a lot of different ways to solve that and one of those ways happens to be the stuff that we offer. So my point is, is that when you’re thinking about the customer journey, so you sell a product, like if you step back the cost point of view and think, okay, like go back to the kiting example. What does, what does Jack want to do? Yeah, I’m here to buy a board and I want to do the best word. I want to know that it’s made out of good material.
Yes. But really what I want is I want the exhilaration and excitement of kiting. I want to be able to be out in the water to have this thrill. Maybe even have the GoPro camera in my mouth and I’m filming stuff. And then I get to show my family and friends like what a stud I am, you know? And so that’s really what I want. Like that’s the future that I’m buying. So what are all the things that are going to help me get to that future where like I’ve realized I’ve crossed the bridge from just getting into kiting to I go kiting all the time and it’s fun and it’s exciting? So you know, translate what I just said, that journey from here’s where I am, but here’s what I, where I really want to be. Translate that to your business and thinking about, okay, what are the various things that they want?
And by the way, this is a great exercise for thinking of content. So we’re going through this right now. We’re not. So our clients, a lot of our kinds are course creators. We’re also breaking into the eCommerce market. So just thinking about course creators, we can, yeah, we can create videos on urgency and scarcity and deadlines and different types of funnels. Yeah, that’s the obvious stuff. But what about things like, Hey, do you, do you ever feel like you’re suffering from imposter syndrome where you’re sitting down to create a course and you’re thinking, gosh, I don’t what, why? Like what do I have to say about this topic? Well here, here are a few tips on how to break through that because yeah, people do want to hear from you and you’ve got important stuff to say. So let’s get past that mental roadblock. Now, what does that have to do with selling deadline funnel?
Absolutely nothing except it’s helping them get from where they are to where they want to be. So covered a couple of different things, but back to either bump offers, which by the way the difference, let’s define it, the difference between a bump offer and an upsell bump offers a tick box that you have on the order form before you put in your credit card that you can sort of superset like, do you know, do you want fins? Would that board and do you want to leave? She goes, yes, yes. And then after I purchased, maybe it’s Hey, a lot of people that bought this board also want this bag or they also want to buy six lessons with the pro around the corner. So you know those, those are things that after the credit card’s been dinged, you know, you can, or the orders would place, you can say, yeah, click once to add that to my order.
So that’s an upsell. So just think in terms of what, what does my client actually need? And it may, it’s, it’s if you’re thinking, yeah, but the answer is something that I don’t provide, Hey that’s good. That’s still something you should write down. Maybe there’s a way you can provide it. Maybe there’s someone else who provides it or maybe you should just, you know, maybe you could create a course around how to choose the best one of those. Like there are different things that you can do to help your, your, your client, your customer, accelerate their journey from where they are to where they want to be. Because more than likely the product they’re buying from you is not the last thing that they’re buying as they, as they try to get from where they are to where they want to be.
Ash Roy (17:36):
The process of actually helping your customer get from where they are to where they want it to be is important. Even if it doesn’t relate directly to your product because you’re earning their trust and you’re getting them to know, like and trust and I think that is important. The reason that the tide guy can offer you those additional things at a discounted price is because of customer acquisition costs. He’s paying a certain amount of money directly or indirectly to get a person to walk in his front door and while they’re there, he’s already acquired the customer. It is cheaper for him to make a sale, an additional sale while they’re already there as opposed to getting someone off the street. Again, that is also important to think about it.
Can I give you another great example? Just popped to my head so every, I actually didn’t wait to hear your answer. I’m going to, I’m going to jump in unless you tell me no. So I used to work summers at my uncle’s veterinary clinic, so my uncle is the owner and he’s got a bunch of other veterinarians who work in his clinics. Now the actual appointments didn’t, I mean they kept it, they kept the electricity running, they kept the employees paid and office supplies stocked. But what really generated the revenue were things like surgeries were things and especially dental. So a dog would come in or a cat would come in and pretty much pretty consistently they would have tartar. Now my uncle had a, I mean I, after about a month of working with them, like I could have given the spiel and it was, it was really, really simple.
I don’t need to go through it, but basically it was very simple, like two or three sentences where it was, his close rate was probably 80% now what was interesting was that I would be, I would, so I was holding the animal for him. He would get a 70% close rate. Now, remember the money is going a lot in his pocket. So he’s very, very good at this. The people that worked under him that didn’t have quite the incentive to do that or just really viewed their job in a different way, didn’t have the same as like they’re just good. They would just say something like, Hey, your T, your, your dog’s teeth are dirty and you know, their, their close rate would be like one at a time. And it was really, really interesting. Now the thing of it is that you know, could you say, okay, well you, your uncle was really taking advantage of people because they’re in this, you know, he’s got the lab coat on.
He’s, he’s got their attention, he’s got their trust, he’s got the authority. All these I could, I could list out other psychological things that are going on and my answer would be no. What he’s, what he’s telling them is true and the choice is theirs. He’s, you know, their dog is going to be the dog and the cat is going to be healthier. Afterward, he just was a lot better at communicating the impact. And actually what he would say is like, look, see this. And he would, he would show it to them and he would say, this is sort of like smoking. And he said, look, your dog, your cat Fifi is not going to die today. But it’s sort of like pack smoking, a pack of cigarettes every single day. Eventually, it’s going to add up and it’s going to cause them all sorts of tumors and this, that and the other thing, you know, it’s all 100% true. So he was doing them a favor by, by, I think that he was doing them a favor by communicating better the true impact of their decision to, you know, to be cheap today versus going ahead and ordering that. But to your point of profit, like every, the reason why he loves getting those deals done was that that was a pure profit that drops straight to the bottom line. And so, yeah he was very, very successful at doing that.
Ash Roy (20:56):
So what I think is important there is the intention. So I think if you’re coming from an intention of wanting to serve and in the intention of genuinely wanting to add value, that is a good thing. And I think only you would know that. Yeah.
Yeah. I’ve told my audience before, and I really got this from John Carlton, who’s a legendary copywriter. He says I’m not going to get his quote exactly right. But basically, if you’re, if, if you believe in what it is that you’re selling if you believe that you, your clients are better or your prospects are better off becoming your clients and buying what you have to offer, then you owe it to them to use everything in your toolbox to, to convince them to take action. It’s a really important mentality that if you’re holding back, you’re doing yourself a disservice. I believe that there’s a fiduciary responsibility. I, I come from the world of years and years, actually over a decade ago, over two decades ago now, working as a financial advisor. And so there’s a fiduciary responsibility of is this recommendation, right? So something I recommend for you may be a great,
It’s going to be a great product, but it may not be a good fit for someone else. So for example, there may be someone who, like I may believe in my product, but you may, you might not be at the right stage in your business for that. And so I think it’s also really important in your messaging, whether it’s one-on-one or even through your webinars or automated emails. If you, if you specifically say, look, if you are, you want to have disqualifiers and just say, look, if you’re, if, if you are, you know, if you’re $50,000 in debt and this is your last thing and you don’t have any experience with marketing and you don’t have any idea what it is you’re going to sell, you should not be taking my advanced, you know, speaking from the stage course, right? You know, so, so there, there are other things that you should get and maybe they’re even in your catalog, but this is, this is not the right thing for you. Like, start off in the shallow end of the pool before you dive in and drown yourself in the deep end.
Ash Roy (22:46):
Episode 170 Ryan Deiss talks about the customer value journey, which I think is quite a useful framework to think about the journey that your customer goes through and that will help you to create good quality offers. We’ve talked about different kinds of offers, which is excellent. We talked about soft offers, bonuses, payment systems, three-tiered offers, the importance of a deadline and an offer, how to use guarantees, and so on. Now let’s talk about how our listeners can actually go about crafting a compelling offer. Do you have a framework you can share with us?
Well, I mean, there’s the concept of an irresistible offer and there there’s even, there’s even books on Amazon, I forget the author’s name, but there’s a book that’s literally called the irresistible offer. I haven’t looked at it in a long time. I don’t really recall whether it’s a book that I would just make it my number one recommendation, but I know that there’s a book out there called the irresistible offer marketing, so there’s another buddy of mine named Todd Brown. Don’t know if he’s been on your podcast, but yeah. Okay. Again, I might misquote him slightly, but it goes something like this. You should, you know that you have the offer right when it’s a bit painful or a lot painful, right? So that might be in terms of the payment plans or the bonuses, you know, you might be given away a bonus that you think, Oh my gosh, like this is, I could easily charge $500 for this.
Right. You know, and so it’s, it’s hard to give a one size fits all formula. But I think that advice, from Todd is really valuable because if you’re comfortable with the offer, it’s probably not sexy enough. It probably needs to be at the point, especially since these are your babies that you’re giving away, so to speak. So you need to, you need to feel a bit of loss. Like you’re losing a part of yourself as you put this into, into the offer. And then you know, once, once it’s painful that you’re, you’re probably reaching it. Maybe you should add a, an even a little bit more. I think it’s a slightly different calculation. If you’re taking someone who has never bought from you before, never heard of you before or has only just heard of you. There is not the relationship, there’s not the trust.
And so I think on the, on the first client acquisition offer, going above and beyond where you are, it’s even a little bit more painful than, than you’re almost to the point where you’re not willing to do the offer. I think that’s when you know, okay, we’ve got this right because this is, this is a hundred X value or this is like, I’m not talking about the fake values where like I shouldn’t say fake, but I’m not talking about the values where people stock it up on the webinar and then it’s only $99 I’m talking about like you genuinely feel like this is one of the most amazing deals and you wish that someone had made this offer to you when you were at the same level so that they can come into your world and have this amazing experience. And that doesn’t mean don’t be generous with your clients once you have clients, but there’s more resistance to get someone past that barrier of I’ve never had a transaction with you and now you want me to versus, Oh, we’ve been, I’ve been on your client list and you always over-deliver and you always have interesting things to say and interesting angles and I’ve been following you for a year and I’ve been your client.
I’ve bought multiple things. That’s a very, very different type of buyer.
Ash Roy (25:58):
In terms of the painful offers, I have to say, I created an offer about a year ago now for founding members in my membership program and you can find out more. Get me to don.com it was $99 a month us dollars and I was giving away four hours of my time in face to face consult. Now I did have something to gain out of it and for me I saw it as paid market research and the qualitative research I got from it was amazing. It helped me launch a lot of valuable products and content. I created the nine-step business guide mind map from it and it’s allowed me to help every single founding member because I have a private discussion thread in there as well. So if I spend four hours with them initially, I can support them that much better in the private discussion thread now that has now cut down to two hours when they join up and they can use those two hours within the first month itself.
Ash Roy (26:48):
And yes it feels painful and I’m going to soon stop that cause obviously it’s not scalable. But the level of insight I got in terms of market research was invaluable. Yes, it has been painful in terms of exchanging so much of my time for so little money. But I have been able to build something that is really valuable and really useful for my members. And it’s actually for business growth. But we’ve come up with ideas like we do these sprints together inside the membership group on a zoom call and massively helps people blow through a lot of their obstacles. And that wouldn’t have happened if I wasn’t doing the face to face onboarding calls with them. So I totally agree with you. I think creating an offer where you feel a bit like, wow, I’m giving away too much, that probably means you are giving away a lot of value. So thank you for sharing that. What are the biggest challenges you’ve seen people face when it comes to creating offers and how do you think people have been able to overcome them in your experience?
So I, I think, I think one of the most challenging things is to try to step outside of what you’re already doing. So there’s I think another, I’m dropping a bunch of names here. So Glenn Livingston, I don’t think he teaches marketing as much anymore, but years and years ago, he is a very analytical fellow, was, was good friends with Perry Marshall. And he had a saying that said something like, a lot of us think that we’re testing this for ad words. A lot of us think that we’re testing 20 different ads, but really what we’re doing is we’re testing one ad with 20 different minor tweaks, like something, something along those lines. Right? So it’s, it’s very challenging for like once we come up with an ad, you know, the, the creativity distance between what we came up with in these variations is not very far.
Like how do you come up with that big idea that’s just radically different. So, and so you could, you think about it in terms of copy, you can think about that in terms of offer creation. So if you’re, like I said earlier on the call, if you, if you roll back to the, to the beginning when I started talking about guarantees, I said, look, don’t just think, okay guarantees, yup, I’ve got a guarantee on my product. What else you got? No, there’s, there’s probably eight or nine different ways to do your guarantee. So if you don’t know what there’s eight or nine different ways to do your guarantee are then that it’s going to be really challenging for you to say, okay, what would this guarantee look like if it was if it had a, an unconditional and a conditional guarantee. Like let’s not dive deep on that.
But for someone who hasn’t heard of that before, I’ve just, I’ve just opened up your world to the possibility that you can have a double guarantee. And now how much more effective is it for me to say, Hey look, I’ve got a double guarantee. The first guarantee works like this and the second guarantee works like this. So there are ways that you can structure your, your offers. So if there’s, if there’s eight different ways to do guarantees and there’s five different ways to do deadlines and there’s, gosh, probably 12 different ways to do bonuses, you start, you start coming up with these different permutations. There’s a lot of different types of ways that you can structure your offer may be over a hundred. So one of the most important things I think is, is for someone to have a framework to, to know what are, what are some of the tests of tried and true ways to structure an offer for different ways to do the price, the payment plan, soft offers, hard offers, upsells, down sells, cross-sells bumps.
What are the different ways of structure deadlines? What are the different ways to structure, you know, so there’s time basis, quantity base. So I think what I’m describing is a way to get around the issue of not being able to come up with something that is substantially different enough to move the needle when you go and test a different offer. Because it’s very likely that you’ll say, okay, I’ve got a 30 day guarantee, so I’m going to try a 35-day guarantee, ha new offer. You know, it’s really not that different. And so, so it’s very, very important for you to be able to come up with radically different offers.
Ash Roy (30:35):
Okay. Let’s talk about action steps our listeners can take to get started with creating good quality offers. So I’m just going to do a quick recap and then maybe you can tell me if you have any additional steps to suggest. So the action steps you want to take, if you want to create a good quality offer, consider the different kinds of offers, guarantees, payment options, soft offers, bonuses, a tiered offer where the person can pick between one of three levels of an offer. It’s very important to understand your customer and their value journey and if you want to learn more about that, go to episode 170 with Ryan Deiss. He talks about that very eloquently. We also talked about the book, the irresistible offer. It might be worth checking that one out. And then we also talked about creating radically different offers rather than just slightly different tweaks on an offer, which really doesn’t make that much of a difference.
Ash Roy (31:27):
Does any other action step our listeners can take to come up with an offer? Oh, one more thing that came to my mind was trial and error testing is a very important part of creating good quality offers. So it’s important to put something out there and see how the market responds because a lot of learning around offers and coming up with offers is an iterative process. So it’s not something that happens in here, but it happens out there. But when you in the market, so you’ve got to put it out there, see how the market responds and iterate and iterate in it. Right. Is there anything else that you think our listeners should be doing?
So one thing that I would want someone to understand is that if you, so it’s important after you have, so we talked about the importance of a deadline and an offer that one of the reasons why it’s important to have a deadline is not just to increase sales and maximize sales and revenue to get as many people and you know, crossing the threshold from prospect to client. Yeah, there was a whole bunch of other reasons, but one of the other added benefits is that when you have a deadline, you can then you then have a date after which it makes complete sense to say, Hey Ash, I noticed that you signed up for the, for the webinar and then you attended the webinar but you didn’t buy. And that’s, that’s cool. No arm twisting here. But we do have a second to just hit reply on this email and just let me know why.
So you, I would recommend having a feedback loop because you might get some information there. But one thing to be careful about, one thing to be careful of is that when people say it was too expensive, it truly does mean that they didn’t see the value. Okay, sure. If they believed that your, especially with business-related products and training, if they truly believe that your product was going to deliver for them and they, here’s another thing, a big objection that people have is I believe that as your product works, I believe that your clients got the results that you said. I believe that you will honor your guarantee. I just don’t believe that I’m the type of person who’s going to take action on that. Like I, I’ve tried this type of thing before and I never do it.
I’m the type of person that buys stuff because I get all excited but I never actually put it into motion. So that’s another thing is that’s more copy related than, than so much offer. But you really want to handle those objections. But understand that when you hear well as the reason why I didn’t buy was that it’s too expensive. Really what that comes down to is like the follow-up question. If you get them on the phone would be, so what do you think would be, it would be more along the lines of what would, what would change your mind to bring it to the point where you saw the value in the product and that’s not even kinda made that up on the spot. That’s not even the best interview question, but just understand that when you hear it’s too expensive, it’s too expensive.
Sometimes that means, yeah, you need to look at your like, maybe that means payment plan. Maybe that means soft offer, but maybe that means you need to sharpen your copywriting chops and or hire a better copywriter or position it better so that people understand the value and how it’s going to change your life. Maybe you need to put in additional testimonials. We went through a phase where I was just using whatever testimonials came in and we were getting a lot, but they happen to skew male even though our audience is pretty 50 50 and we got, we started getting feedback that well, but you don’t have any case studies. All your case studies and testimonials are from men. And these were women saying, where are the female testimonials? Am I the only am the only woman whose, whose am I the first one to buy this?
And so I went on a campaign to reach out to my audience of the other 50% who hadn’t given testimonials. And now you’ll see it’s probably skewed the other way. We probably have more, I don’t know this for a fact, but I wouldn’t be surprised if we have more women testimonials, more testimonies from women than from men. So that’s, that’s another part that’s kind of more copy related, but that’s something else that would be important too, you know, to, to know. The other thing, you know, I really, this, this is not a tip for them as much as it is a recommendation for you. You know Michael’s mains is, is really, really split the item on how to, how to put offers together. He’s got something called the offer Academy, so you should really, we’ll connect you with him so that he can get on your podcast.
Ash Roy (35:32):
Michael and I are already connected on Facebook. We’ve been exchanging messages back and forth, just trying to find time when we can do it. Yeah, I’d love to have Michael on.
Yeah. So in terms of, yeah, there was something else I wanted to say about offers, but I think I went too deep in the weeds, and then now the ideas left me. But those are, those are some of the top of my mind. Suggestions on the offers, you know, after the deadline, have that feedback loop so that you can collect information and ask them why was it that you didn’t, didn’t purchase today. The other thing is that you know, timing is also a component of the offer. So if you go through my webinar today and you don’t purchase on the full price, you know, there’s no reason why. Maybe after, maybe after 30 days, if I send you some good content that’s related to it and you seem to be engaging, maybe my system sends out something, but this time it’s going to be a, an offer that has a payment plan.
Maybe after you, maybe after you take the payment plan, you, the upsell isn’t actually for something else. Maybe the upsell is, look, Ash totally find that you’re on the payment plan, right? But while you’re here, if you, anytime in the next 30 days, we just, or, or right now I want to let you know that you could, you could go back onto the annual plan and you’ll save 500 bucks. Right? So if you, if you pay us now, like so, so that’s, that’s something that could be that can be done in the background as well.
Ash Roy (36:52):
Another point I’d like to make is not only asking people why they didn’t purchase, but also ask people why they did purchase. Because that often will give you a good insight into, yeah, you know what, tip them over the edge to purchase and then you can use that to inform your copy. I’ve always felt that about 80% of copywriting is about understanding your audience and maybe 20% is about screening the words together cleverly because you may be the best and write beautifully, but if it’s the wrong words or it’s addressing the wrong problem, it’s not going to work. So I really think copywriting is about really understanding your customer and empathizing with them.
Absolutely. Well said.
Ash Roy (37:33):
All right, so Jack, how do people find out more about you and about deadline funnel?
Yeah, so I do have a website that’s Jackborn.com if you just want to see like who is this guy, what’s he about? It’s a one-page website that just has some testimonials and things that I’ve done, but the real probably the real best benefit based on like the conversation that you and I had today is to check out deadline funnel so they can go to deadlinefunnel.com and check it out. You know, one of the things that I just want to bring this back to is that the philosophy that I’ve, I’ve got an amazing team. The philosophy that I’ve really given my team is that, you know, people are not here to, to buy and to learn another software. Yes, that’s a step in their journey. That’s the stuff that we provide. But really what we’re here to do is to help them get from where they are to where they want to be as quickly as possible.
And the way that that shows up is in the speed at which my team answers questions and the way that the answer to the questions, if you go to, I think a lot of us had that experience with software companies where as soon as you mentioned some other software like, Hey, I wish I’m using your software and I’m trying to connect it to Infusionsoft, you’re like, Oh, you mentioned another software company, so you need to go talk to them. Like, like hands-off. We’re not answering that question. Like we’re there to help make, make sure everything works together. And so we welcome those types of questions. That’s what we deal with. And so we’re not gonna say, well wait for a second, this is not, this is not our territory. You mentioned another product, this is what we do. So my team and I view our job as helping get you from where you are to where you want to be so that you can have the business that you’ve always wanted. And that truly is our philosophy. So we have a 14-day free trial. I’m not going to do a big pitch, but we have a 14-day free trial where you can see that for yourself and just experience if we walk our talk. And so I invite you to come over and check it out
Ash Roy (39:20):
And they can find out more about that at deadlinefunnel.com. What I like about deadline funnel is it creates genuine scarcity. There’s a lot of fake scarcity out there where people say, you know, this offer expires within one day and then you go there 15 days later and it’s saying the same thing expires in one day or 24 hours left. And so on. But to my knowledge, the only software that actually creates genuine scarcity is this one. Because if I receive an email saying this offer is valid for another 15 days, and if I go back to that same landing page or that email that said it say in 20 days’ time, it will say this offer is now expired for me. Right. If that email goes out to Jack born 12 days later, then the clock starts ticking for him on that 12th day and it only then expires 15 days. Hence. So the point is the countdown timer is individual to each person.
So bringing it back to the whole Australia adventure, I on one of our most recent trips from the US to Australia, I thought this would be a neat experiment. So I started the recorder. I started at an airport, I started as a new prospect in a funnel, flew to Australia, recovered from the jet lag, and then went to the Ribena Apple store. Went and bought this, this iPad and loaded it in the store. My daughter’s filming in the store. I loaded it, loaded up, you know, did the thing where you click the button and it pulls everything over open on my email and it said, you know, you’ve got one and a half days left because I had started it, you know, back in the States. So a completely new device, completely different country. Obviously cookies were not an issue. The IP address was different, but the system is still new that it was me opening up that email and I had the right amount of timeline.
Ash Roy (41:11):
So you heard it here guys. Deadlinefunnel.com if you want to find out more. Thank you very much for being a guest on the show, Jack. Thank you. It was, it was really good fun. Maybe we can do it again too.
Yeah, that would be fantastic.
