Lisa Sasevich joins us to talk about how your book can lead people to an existing part of your conversion path, for example a webinar.   By pre-disposing people to want to do business with you and setting the context of the next step in your book, you can boost your sales and dramatically improve the effectiveness of your campaign.

BoostYourSalesBook.com

Transcript - Book More Show 005

Susan: Welcome back. This is Susan Austin and with me today is Stuart Bell, Hi Stuart.

Stuart: Susan, how are you doing?

Susan: Fabulous. I'm super excited about today, because we have a guest on our podcast. We've got Lisa Sasevich. Lisa has been one of the proponents of the 90-Minute Book, and she is the author of The Invisible Close and Boost Your Sales. Welcome Lisa.

Lisa: Thank you so much. I would consider myself a huge success story client of the 90-Minute Book process. So thanks for having me today. I'm excited to share about it.

Susan: Absolutely. Let's do this Lisa. Talk to us for a few minutes about your book. Who it's for ...

Lisa: Sure.

Susan: What problem it helps people solve.

Lisa: Sure. Sure. Yes. My book is called Boost Your Sales, and it's for those of you who love what you do but hate the sales part. In it we teach you how exactly to structure an irresistible offer that does the selling for you, so that your client sees you've contributed to them greatly and they thank you for your offer or your invitation. We show you the exact steps on how to structure what we call a signature talk. You can consider that like a presentation that leads to your irresistible offer.

Susan, why I chose to write the book on this topic is because these are the exact steps, the exact tools that I use to literally, we've done over 30 million dollars of sales from my home. I have a home-based business in the last 6 years, I started it when my kids were a newborn and a 3-year old. I needed to figure out how could I make a difference for more people. Now we've got clients in 134 countries and it's all because I learned how to make irresistible offers and then structure a signature talk or a presentation that leads to those offers.

That's what Boost Your Sale does. In fact, why keep it a secret for anybody that wants to check it out, I've arranged for you guys to have our free downloadable version. I'll just put it out there at boostyoursalesbook.com, boostyoursalesbook.com, and you can see how you can use irresistible offers in your own business or maybe you've got a hobby that you'd like to turn into a real business. It's really for anyone who's a service professional, an expert, a coach, a speaker of any kind. You can tell, I'm kind of excited about it.

Susan: Very good. You have to be one of the more prolific social media users. You get your message out, by speaking, of course webinars, videos. Can you talk to us about what having a book does for your business that those other mediums maybe couldn't do?

Lisa: I don't think it's any secret that there is a prestige in having a book. Regardless of all the different ways that we as experts and entrepreneurs can use to get our message out. There's something about the perception when somebody's holding a book in their hand or even when they're downloading a book. When you say free book or new book there's just an elevated status. Having that book, we've been able to use it.

We leverage all of our awesome social media strategies to direct either to our free downloadable book like many of you are probably downloading right now. We've also got strategies where we use it where we can attract people with a free book. Then they can have the option to click to pay and have it shipped, so we also use the book as a way to qualify leads. Somebody who downloads the free book is one level of qualification. We definitely know that they're raising their hand saying, yeah I want to boost my sales. That identifies them as a potential ideal client for us, and then that next level when someone says you know I'll pay the $4.95, $2.95, $6.95 or whatever your price point. I'll pay that few dollars to also have it shipped. Now all of a sudden we're moving into a next level of qualification.

We also can use the book as a tool on the front end to help us identify people that have the need that we solve. For those of you that are considering the book or maybe you have one, one of the things that we really like to look at is how can you reverse engineer that book so that it leads to that first step that people would take with you whether it's an in-office appointment. Maybe it's getting on the phone for some kind of a consult strategy session, exploratory call or maybe, like in the case of our book it can give a ton of value and then walk somebody all the way through to the opportunity to take advantage of an irresistible offer. I'll give you a little clue, not only are we teaching you how to make an irresistible offer in our book, but you'll actually find that there is an irresistible offer in our book. Again, it's at boostyoursalebook.com if you want to check that out.

Stuart: I think that's interesting the point you highlight there. The steps here gives you an extra tool in the front to help people self select as hotter. We often hear people talking that one to include too much detail in the book or really looking to convince people to take that next step. Rather than we talk about just compel them to take a small or a shorter next step rather than jumping right to too much of a close to begin with. It sounds like in the robust follow that you've got set up already, the book plays quite a key part in helping people move from one stage to the next and helping you identify those hotter leads.

Lisa: Absolutely. I think that it's a mistake to just go straight for the sale without giving someone the chance to opt-in to give you their name and email to receive your book because that gives us the chance, having somebody opt-in. I love that you guys actually create an opt-in page, a landing page, a sweet page, it can be called different things. I know that in part of your process, you create a page where people can collect those qualified leads. Correct me if I'm wrong, but what I think is so powerful about that is that is really to me part of the goal of the book.

If somebody gives you their name and email and downloads your book for free or you ship them a book it really doesn't matter. Once you've captured that lead really where the magic is, the money is and the ability to really make a difference for people is the lifetime value of that person, that lead, that human that raised their hand and said, yes I'm interested, I need to boost my sales. I have that problem. Fill in the blanks with what you do, yes I'd like to learn more about securing my financial future, or yes I'd like to transform my relationship, or yes I'd like to assess my insurance needs. Trying to think of all the different clients that I know that also have done books with you guys.

I think there's a huge value to using the book like a carrot to really sort out, who has the problem that your book solves and then, this is where our business comes in, then you use what we call your sales conversion machine. Your different ways that you can start to provide more value for that person and move them into a potential higher level invested relationship with you. I love the relationship that we have and having used your book for myself, because on our campus we're teaching things like how to make an irresistible offer, how to get on the stage and make your presentation and make that offer and have people throwing money at you or how to make your offers on teleseminars, on webinars all those things that are the back end after a book.

I was excited to do the book with you and then know that, not just for me, but for really all of your clients we are such a perfect match to be able to create that sale conversion machine. The book, you could think of it in the category of lead attraction that's how we find the right people. It's kind of the bait on the end of the fishing pole that is exactly the right flavor for the fish you want to catch. Exactly the right taste for your ideal client. Once you reel them in, they say yes I want that, you've got to have that structure on the other side to turn them into a client.

The mistake a lot of people are making and hopefully this could contribute to some of the authors listening or potential authors listening is to go out there and attract a bunch of leads but not have a system to convert them into clients. That's very expensive and very time consuming and it's the thing that makes people feel like they're spending all this money and people love them but nobody's buying from them. My advice, and really how we're using the book is get that sales conversion machine built, and our book will help you with that. Get your offer down, have your presentation that leads to it, and then you use that book like crazy to feed the machine with the awesome people that you want to help.

Stuart: Absolutely and so glad that you're talking in terms of how it fits in the over all marketing strategy. I think the people that we speak to that have the biggest problem in contextualizing where the book sits in an oval funnel are focusing too much on the book itself rather than realizing that the book is almost just a Trojan Horse to deliver the message of the next step, the message in the funnel.

You hit the nail on the head in terms that this is a fantastic way of getting people to raise their hands in a very non-commital way. Then it's a stepping stone in the funnel towards providing value to them, educating and motivating them towards an execution, leading them towards a better sales message in the end. You guys teach across the area of being able to close those leads in a particular way. I think it's a good lesson or good example for anyone listening thinking of the book not as a be-all, end-all in its own way. We're not talking about making people award-winning authors here, but it's a very powerful tool to allow people to raise their hand. Then also get all of the benefits of being a published author as a kind of a side benefit a credibility benefit to the main stuck in the funnel allow people to raise their hand in a non-committal way.

Lisa: Yeah agreed.

Susan: Lisa, let me ask you this because this comes up a lot for our authors. These are fairly thin books as far as books go. I think they're generally around 50 pages. Some authors struggle with the books not being 180 pages, 225 pages because they feel like those books kind of pack a bigger punch. What would you say to those authors?

Lisa: If your book is the end-all, be-all of your sales funnel, you want to make your million dollars selling $20 books then by all means write your Pulitzer prize winner. I probably have the wrong prize there. Whatever the one is for writing it shows you how concerned I'm not with that. The proposition here is for the investment of time and money is less than a couple thousand dollars, can you attract one, two, three new clients. If you can, then you can use that cycle.

I'm looking at the system. Everything we teach is about systems and structures for sales conversion, and this is the lead attraction piece. As far as the size of the book, I believe ours is 60 pages, you guys can again check it out at boostyoursales.com. By the way, you'll be offered the chance to also register after you get that for a 90-minute training webinar. You'll see that we attach it to a 90-minute webinar that takes the book even deeper. I'm not trying to get everything into 60 pages, there's a ton of value in there. It's enough for somebody to say, "Oh yeah let me click, and also I loved what I learned in this book. I can use it right away and here let me also click and go into Lisa's 90-minute training webinar." Now we've got someone that's learning from me, we're in a mentor/student relationship which is really where I want to go with people who need our services.

I will tell you we do a lot online, and I do a lot from live stages. When I sit next to someone on an airplane or I get in a class of 50 people somewhere where I was a participant I didn't really have a way, I don't need people at Starbuck's to pick my brain. We do thousands of clients all over the world. I didn't have a way to do that unless I said go to this website and opt-in for some free gift or report. Having the book in my hand, for example, I was able to pass it out in a class that Dean Jackson and I are in, passed out the book to the 50 people in the class, because it was only 60 pages most people read it on their flight home or they read it that night before the second day of the class.

The magic of that is the people that I had known in this class for five years that knew that I teach sales, something about irresistible offers they read the book and suddenly another person in our class came up and said, "I have a speaking gig. I want you to come and speak to my female investors." Another gentleman who has a huge podcast all with entrepreneurs, my perfect market, said, "You know I read your book last night. Can I interview you for my podcast?" Yesterday he said the interview was so great he's putting the article in the Huffington Post, transcribing it. All of that came from being able to hand them a 50 or 60 page book.

I have other books, we have four best sellers. If I handed them one of my 300-page novels he wouldn't have come back the next morning. Two speaking opportunities, two other people that had been in the class with me five years came back and said, "I read your book. I bought your Speak to Sell Program last night." The book gives you $1000 off of our top-selling program at the end. That's the irresistible offer. Two people had bought it, so just from handing out the book to that 50-person class I had two, a live speaking gig, a virtual speaking gig and right on the spot two people I had been in class with for five years said, "Oh I never totally realized what you did."

I looked and sure enough they had both registered themselves for our five-week virtual online program that takes the book further. Think of it like the appetizer. If you just go deep on one thing that you know and really give it away and then you outline all the other pieces that you weren't able to cover but they would come and invest in your service for you give people. If the appetizer's so good, they're going to want the whole meal. That's how I would think of the book, what is one piece that you could just go. We call it in our Speak to Sell course, deep dish, what's one piece that you could go deep dish on, give it away, and then say hey these are all the other pieces that we didn't cover here, would you like to come work with me?

For those of you listening that like this idea, definitely check out my book. It's about exactly how to do that. I'm excited, because we have thousands and thousands of graduates of our Speak to Sell Boot Camp all over the world, and every single one of them can now take that presentation. We call it their signature talk and plop it right into one of these books. It's perfect.

In fact I just made the offer for this book to about 100 of my highest-level clients, and we have a year-long mastermind program and Susan, I'm sure you've already seen this. I only had 26 spots to offer. I'm like, I want everything you have Susan. She's like all right right now you can sell 26. I just told them about it, told them about the success with my book, it was gone in five minutes. These are successful entrepreneurs, and they get it. I felt like it was a disservice not to tell them about it just sort of an FYI, a little commercial about it. I think it took five minutes, and they just ran to my customer service table. We were having to take numbers. They get it.

Stuart: That appetizer analogy is absolutely the perfect position to help someone understand how this fits into a funnel. I think there is this where there's all the benefits of being an author with a book there's all the overhead and the assumptions that people have going into it. They think this is a one-shot deal, because they've got a publishing mindset. It's difficult to put all of the effort into one thing if this is really the opportunity.

The nature of the books in this sense is exactly you said, it's an appetizer. It's the deep dish example is perfect. Have this one deep for this audience, and then create another one for the second audience and a third for the third. This isn't like we're talking a year to create something and hundreds of hours of ghost writing. This is the kind of appetizer example, it's a relatively low cost entrée that can be quickly turned around, give someone a real taste for it. To close the analogy loop, if you give the best possible appetizer but it's still within the constraints of an appetizer plate, it's not as if you're offering them a huge dish that's only got a little bit of food in the center. You're offering 100% of that appetizer. They'll be very satisfied with that and then look for more. It's not as if you're intentionally keeping stuff back. You've delivered 100% of what's deliverable within this package. Then, hey look, there's a whole lot of other things that you can pick from here as well.

Lisa: Exactly and that was the results that I got from the physical copy. All of that came from just handing it out to just 50 people, but the digital copy has actually been where the biggest breakthroughs have come from. When I did the book, I saw the invitation to do that book and I thought oh, no brainer. I'm going to go through the process, because if it works for me I've got 5000 graduates in my Speak to Sell Program that are already trained. They've got the content, they've got the presentation. That's what you do on your interview.

I bought it, the package, and did the book. It took exactly what you said, just a quick set-up call and a quick interview which we've been able to also use the interview over and over. I wasn't even thinking when I bought it about the digital use. I was thinking about the physical use. Once we got the digital back, we were going into an online launch so every year we launch our Speak to Sell virtual Boot Camp. I thought, you know what, why don't I use the free download of this thing as sort of a warm-up to making the offer. In our industry we call it sort of a pre-launch content. Something you give away free to have people identify themselves that would be good prospective clients.

We put the book out there, did a bunch of social media, we happened to use affiliates, others who are promoting us and believe in our work. We have a lot of people who believe in our work, big names, Brian Tracy, John Assaraf, Robert Allen and then tons of really specialized entrepreneurs who are leaders in their industry. We had affiliates promoting.

To my surprise, probably the biggest I would say opt-in bucket we call it, the number of people that raised their hand and put their name and email in for something free we've offered at one time was about 15,000 people. We had over 40,000 people opt in for the free book. Forty thousand people. We set it up on Kindle as a free download half-way through, because we realized oh my God, we can hit best seller. We set it up on Kindle half-way through and hit best seller in four categories. Now it's an Amazon best seller in four categories and it ended up being our biggest online launch ever. I didn't even write it for that. I wasn't planning for that, but that is the power for us of combining, getting that sales conversion presentation down, we call it your signature talk, again we teach it in our Speak to Sell Boot Camp. I'm seeding here. I want to make sure you guys know about the course. Combining that and then putting it into a structure like this book.

It worked so well, I thought is this a fluke? We did another book. We did the same thing that 50 to 60 page book. The next one was called Position Yourself for Online Sales Success. It lead into a course we have called Six Figure Teleseminar and Webinar Sales System. We just finished launching that about two weeks ago, 33,000 opt-ins, number one Amazon best seller. Let's say we get a thousand new clients out of those 33,000 people that downloaded the book. Guess what? There's still 32,000 new people on my email subscriber list that I now get to enjoy the lifetime value of that relationship. Some of them are going to buy from you right away, but the rest of them, and this is why you want that back end sales conversion machine, the rest of them will buy from you over time. It's really a magical tool. The digital, I want to stress the power of the digital and the physical.

Stuart: Those numbers are quite astounding. The likelihood of being able to engage that many people without having something as valuable as useful to offer them. It really does speak again to the value of a clear concise message offered in a non-threatening way and really separating out the steps of the funnel. Allowing people to raise their hand or identify themselves interested is one step, and then after that it's sifting and sorting and educating and motivating. Too many people, I think, try and combine those steps together. The list is now substantially larger, because that particular stage of the funnel its sole job was to identify people who are broadly interested. It's done a fantastic way of doing that for an extra 75,000 people.

Lisa: The other way that we use it is for a way that we call an Evergreen Funnel. We are running ads on Facebook everyday that are inviting people to download one of my newest free, now it's best-selling books. We run ads everyday, and people download the book. When they download the book on the thank-you page that pops up, it says hey your book's in your inbox. How would you like a 90-minute free training webinar on the same topic? They register for the webinar and the webinar gives literally 90 minutes of pure teaching and makes the invitation with a really irresistible offer and some really special bonuses to join us for example in our Speak to Sell Boot Camp.

All day long, I just dropped my kids at camp, and I see orders coming in on my cell phone that say Speak to Sell Boot Camp-E, that's how I know it was an Evergreen order. Somebody in Thailand downloaded my book while I was sleeping, listened to the webinar and bought our virtual boot camp. We also are using it as the front end for that.

Obviously it kind of makes the investment a no-brainer and frankly if you look at the cost to not have the tool. How many people have you sat in next to in networking group or a class for five years like me, and they just know you do real estate. They had no idea you were like the VA Specialist or you were the top-producing, It reminds me like if I asked most of you if your mother-in-law really understand what you do. I know the answer. She doesn't, but if you have this little book and you give it to your mother-in-law, she will understand what you do. She will be able to brag to her friends about more than the golf trophy that you just won. It really can open things up whether you have a physical practice or a service-based business.

Susan: Wow this is quite outstanding, Lisa. What struck me is that you use the book, I just want to highlight this because I think this is so key. You use the book to point to a webinar that I assume, Lisa, you recorded once.

Lisa: Exactly. That is the power. I'm so glad you pointed that out. Well go ahead, I want to highlight something there.

Susan: The leverage piece here cannot be understated, because the book you recorded once and now you can use it thousands and thousands of times as you're illustrating. Then it points to a webinar that you recorded once. The leverage piece here on your time and to literally walk these people from the next step to the next step it's really quite brilliant.

Lisa: That's the beauty and why I'm so passionate about what you're doing because of the marriage between the lead attraction piece of having the book and then what we do. I'm the queen of sales conversion. I care about that when you get those leads that you're going to convert the maximum percent into clients.

Why I love sharing this with my clients is because they've done the work to put their signature talk together, and that signature talk, yes it can be given on a live stage but guess what? You can pick up the phone and record it on a teleseminar or do it as a webinar. When you then also use the basis of it for your interview when you do your 90-minute book now they're reading it, they like it, they do the webinar, it's taking it a little bit deeper. It's a beautiful thing and yes you do the 90-minute book process once and it really is a 90-minute process, hard to believe. Then you get your signature talk done and you get that down once and you'll be able to also use that for a million things.

It's exciting to have something where for me what you are offering was such a natural extension to what our clients already have in their hand. It's like, oh duh, put it in the book too. You've already done the work, put it in a book too. I look forward to sending more people to get their 90-minute book done. I look forward to having more 90-minute book authors come and get their Speak to Sell signature talk done and facilitate that process. Check out my book, look at the structure, learn the teaching, look at the way we do our offer boostyoursalesbook.com.

I'm happy for you guys to use as an example. I will say now that we're a big kid 500 company, still working from home, we enhanced our cover a bit. We did a few extra things. We're a little bit beyond the 90-minute book process but not much. We have very specific graphic requirements and picture requirements with our brand. You'll see maybe a little bit of an enhancement there, but it wasn't like it was needed. It was just we're brand picky, that's all.

Lisa: Stuart, I think we should require all of our 90-Minute Book authors to follow Lisa's program before they sign up, what do you think?

Stuart: And I'm looking forward to seeing the next 25 or so of Lisa's guys coming through the program. It should be quite seamless for everyone involved, and to get the feedback from everyone after it we're going to have hundreds and thousands of new prospects all across the world now tying in the two programs together.

Lisa: The neat thing is now that I have the book you can refer them by just saying, here this will help you get your book done. Go to boostyoursalesbook.com. If I didn't have that you and I'd be trying to figure out how to let your people know about our Speak to Sell Program. Well we have the way, it's the book. Here it is right in action. Somebody says we should let all our clients know about you. I'm like, great, here is my book. I can ship you 50 or you can just send out this link to your customers boostyoursalesbook.com, and now I have a way to share my service. That's exactly the perfect summary of everything we're talking about in action right on the court.

Susan: Very good, fabulous. Lisa, thank you very much for coming onboard today. You are a super star, and I love what you're doing with the book. You're a perfect example of what the possibility and the opportunity that these books provide versus people that come in with kind of a narrow focus. They want to write the book, they want it to give them some prestige, they don't really even see the bigger picture, Lisa. You're painting that brilliantly for them. Thank you.

Lisa: I would say to those of you just getting started where some of the things I talk about seem so distant in what you're building. Just get one done. Do a book where you give away something that's your specialty that people come to you for. There might be a million financial planners, but nobody's planning for the teenage, people with teenagers like you do. Find your little niche, write your book on that deep narrow topic with an invitation for a consult or an in-office appointment or an on-the-phone strategy session or maybe to take a survey, some call to action at the end. You can start that simply, you don't need to have an online presence, but just get one done.

Listen for the investment, you can do another one in a few months. It doesn't take much time. Clearly it it gets you a client or two it's a no brainer. So many people are suffering the cost of not doing this because they're over thinking it. I would say go through it just for the experience. Get a book done. Your big book that you're going to write one day, it will always be there. It will be so much more real if you go ahead, just say yes, don't over think it, don't worry if you know what you're going to do it on yet.

There's something about, we teach this in our own sales process. There's something about just committing. If it sounds like a good idea, if it's making sense even if you don't have it figured out in your head, there's something about saying yes, I don't even know what I'm going to use it for but yes it makes sense to me. Just register, get yourself set up. I don't even know how you do it. Get yourself set up to do a book. That's what I did.

I honestly did not know how I was going to use this thing. I just knew this makes sense. I'll figure out a use for it, let me just go ahead and commit. Of course, once I committed then my brain was like ....my brain started to listen and ask questions. Before I knew it, I knew exactly what I was going to do with it. Honestly the uses are still unfolding. Until you do it, and you sign up, you get yourself committed then the ideas for what to do with it will become very real. That's my advice if you're listening, and I painted a huge possibility but it seems far away, just get started. Take the first step forward. That's my advice.

Susan: Very good. Go check out Lisa's book at boostyoursalesbook.com. Thank you Lisa. Fabulous. I can't wait. Maybe in another six months we'll do a follow-up talk podcast to see what other new ideas you've come up with.

Lisa: Let's definitely do that, for sure. Meanwhile I know you've got a ton of my clients who are waiting in line to get their book done. They're all saying how happy they are, how responsive you are, how quick they're getting scheduled, how helpful their first call is with you, so just keep taking great care of them and I'm thrilled. Thank you.