As the founder and CEO of Training Business Pros, Paul Tobey is widely regarded as one of North America’s top trainers and internet marketing experts. He is also a highly respected and in-demand speaker known for his passion, professionalism, and enthusiasm and his dynamic, well-prepared presentations.
Paul is a multi-award winning jazz pianist and former Arkadia Records recording artist, having enjoyed a successful 22-year career as a musician. In search of a fresh challenge, Paul traded artistry for entrepreneurship, selling sheet music online and helping artists develop tools to market themselves. After mentoring with a number of the world’s top trainers, Paul began to take on the world of Internet marketing and founded Training Business Pros in 2007.
In the years since, Paul has personally trained thousands of business owners and executives, helping them save on their bottom line while improving their personal and professional lives. To find out more about
https://www.wp-tonic.com/podcast/518-wp-tonic-show-with-special-guest-paul-toybe/
Johnathan: Welcome back folks to the WP-Tonic show. This is episode 524. We got a returning guest. He was on only a few weeks ago, but he came up with a subject that I thought all listeners and viewers want to hear about. And that’s about how you get more sales from your leads and the mythologies and methods that you should be using in 2020 to achieve that. So, I’ve got Paul back. Paul, would you like to quickly introduce yourself to the listeners and viewers?
Paul: Yes. My name is Paul Tobey. I am the CEO of a digital marketing agency and training company known as Training Business pros. And I also run a couple of online membership platforms like That’s Ambitious and Jazz Mental.
Johnathan: And I’ve got my great co-host, Adrian. Adrian, would you like to quickly introduce yourself to the new listeners and viewers?
Adrian: Hi everyone. My name is Adrian. I’m the CEO and founder of Groundhogg. We help small businesses launch their funnel and grow their list and scale their business.
Johnathan: And we were discussing with Paul and Paul’s going to come on the show at a later time, but we had a guest that had an emergency and had to drop out at the last minute. And Paul’s very gracious to say that he was about today to share his thoughts and ideas about this really important subject. So, Paul how shall we start this really important conversation? Where shall we start on this windy road.
Paul: So, what’s the number one thing you need to do in business to be successful?
Johnathan: Sales.
Paul: If you’re not selling, it’s not a business, it’s a professional hobby. And I think many people who are in business or in the early entrepreneurial stages should, and as a prerequisite, to understanding that business thrives on sales and without sales, there’s no cash flow and without cash flow, there is no business as a prerequisite to foreshadowing more sales, everyone should be taking some form of sales training yet. Statistically, how many people do you think do that?
Johnathan: Very few. And I’m one of them.
Paul: Well, there’s a couple of reasons for that. Number one, people think that the product, if it’s good enough, it will sell itself. Number two is they’re naturally likable so they think they can sell anything to anyone.
Johnathan: Well, that excludes me, doesn’t it, Paul?
Paul : Thank you. And number three, good sales training is actually hard to find.
Johnathan: I think they jokes Paul; you don’t respond to them. Well, you do do. Well, I know, sorry.
Paul: I’m laughing on the inside.
Johnathan: Right, right.
Paul: So, if we start with that very premise, that sales is the most important thing, why is it that people don’t take sales training? And if you did take sales training, what would you actually learn? And so, what I would like to share with you today is an actual template, which is a step by step formula on how to make an offer, not make a pitch, not sell, not oversell, but just make an offer. So, if you sort of change the way you look at things, the things that you look at will start to change. We changed the word pitch to offer it automatically takes on a well, I’m not really selling, I’m just making an offer because people don’t like to sell, people don’t like to sell because it feels uncomfortable, because they don’t like being sold to, so they think if they try to sell to somebody else that will make them feel uncomfortable. Does that make sense?
Johnathan: Yep, yeah.
Paul: Okay. So if we start from there, then you have to think about, well, what is the medium today in 2020 that is accessible to everyone that would help me make more sales and if I got into that medium, what would be the formula and format to do that? And I think everybody’s talking about presenting, especially during COVID times, right? Everything’s turned to things like this podcasting and zoom meetings and just webinar presentations. It’s all about video, video, video, video. So, what is the actual format in a video to make more sales? And that’s what I’d like to share with you today. It’s a format that I didn’t create, I want to preface that right off the bat. I learned in life that you don’t get in trouble for borrowing other people’s information get in trouble for cheating in real life. If you, we were in college and you were taking a sales course in college, which by the way does not exist, but if you were, and during the test at the end of the year, the questions were multiple choice and you yelled across the room to your friend Adrian and you said, hey Adrian what’s the answer to question three? And Adrian yells out C and you write C on your paper, you got in trouble for that, you would fail the exam because you asked for help.
The problem is that trained us all not to ask for help in life. And I’ve learned in life that you get a lot further ahead if you work with people you trust and respect and you ask them for information and guidance based on things they’ve done before. So, this sales template I didn’t make up, it’s actually created by some of the most wealthy speakers and trainers on the planet, including Conrad Levinson, T Harv Eker, Bob Proctor, and sales dogs sales dogs, can’t remember his name right now, guys like Rob Riopel, they basically got together and they decided based on their selective or collective experience to create this template that can be used in any presentation situation to get results. And before we share it with you, I’d like to turn it over to Adrian because I know that Adrian knows it well.
Johnathan: Yeah, that’s great. Over to you Adrian.
Paul: And I want to hear a recent result that he got with this particular template.
Johnathan: That’s great.
Adrian: Yeah. So, I’ve been learning this particular template for a very, very, very long time. And I recently deployed it for the first time in a webinar presentation for my business Groundhogg, I was on a webinar with Buddy Boss. I I promoted it a little bit, a couple weeks passed on this podcast and we had about I want to say 150 people on the call and utilizing the template that Paul’s about to share with you, we sold all, we had a discount code for 20% off and we were limiting that to 25 people to buy it. We have a fairly… it’s not a cheap product, it’s not the most expensive product on the market so 25 people at our price point is pretty respectable. We sold out of that particular discount code to the point where people were like, it’s not working. I’m like, well, that’s because 25 people bought. So, I think sales at the end of the call… so not including the residual sales of which I’m continuing to get from this particular call within the first, I want to say three hours of ending the call. We had made $7,500 in revenue. It’s not enough to break the bank, but for an hours’ time, it’s certainly respectable.
Johnathan: Well, I think that’s fantastic result because you know, webinars, I still think webinars are powerful, but it’s like everything online, everything’s just getting more and more and more competitive, but to get that result, that’s fantastic. So, Paul, can we dive in a little bit into this template then? We’ve got about five to 12 minutes before we got to go for our break. So maybe you can give us a quick outline, which we will develop in the second half of the show Paul.
Paul: So, the first thing is during the presentation if you’ve heard from Glen Gary, Glen Ross, you know the concept of always be selling, please don’t do that. That’s the biggest mistake that people make when you go on…
Adrian: Always be closing.
Paul: Yeah, sorry. Always be closing, whatever. Always be selling, always be closing, it’s a mistake. When you do a presentation, especially when you’re invited on a presentation first of all, you must give value and that value should not come in the form of information because information does not solve problems. Give them step by step instructions. Just like we’re doing today. I’m going to give you step by step instructions on how to follow a proven template for making more sales on the back end of a presentation. Step one is don’t be always selling, just give value in the form of step by step information for the majority of time that you’re on the call.
Okay, that’s number one. If you constantly be talking all my product, this and it’s on sale and it’s this and that it’s like, people will just absolutely get turned off by that and that will not work. So, when you get a good say… if it’s an hour presentation and you get a good 50 minutes into the presentation and you’ve handled the questions that came during the presentation, don’t take questions before the close. If you take questions, you’ll open up a rabbit’s nest, a hornet’s nest of really annoying sometimes often combative questions that can just get you sucked into the weeds and your offer at the end will fall flat. So, if you want to take a few questions throughout the presentation, fine, but don’t take them before the close. That’s very key here. Then step one in the close is to do what we call the transition.
You have to move away from information and step by step instruction into an offer. How do you make that transition? And there’s two elements to that. The first is introduce to them the biggest problem that you believe your audience will have if they don’t do take your offer, start with that. And you can even say that, you know, the biggest problem that I think you’re going to have moving forward is that you won’t be able to follow up with prospects in a real and meaningful way, you won’t be able to make timely offers in specific places that can convert more sales, you won’t be able to do this, you won’t be able to do that. Does that make sense? Okay.
Then what you do is right in conjunction with that, right after that is, I have a one day, one-year, three-day coaching product, template, course, tip sheet, whatever it is that will l in this amount of time, get this result. You’re not giving them specifics about how it’s going to do that; you’re just telling them that the solution to your problem is to buy this specific name of course, name of coaching program, name of product, and then the benefits of actually doing that. Does that make sense?
Johnathan: It does yes.
Paul: So, the transition is, introduced their biggest problem and offer up a solution. Then before talking about it, ask permission to do so. And I always say, this is it okay if I tell you a little bit about it. Now I get in a webinar’s situation that you’re not going to get a verbal response, but the fact that you asked shows a tremendous amount of humility, it also gives you psychological permission, if they say yes in their head to go and make the offer. So, those are the two sections. One, introduce the problem, offer up the solution and two ask permission to actually talk about it.
Johnathan: Well, I see that. That’s fantastic. So, maybe in the second half, we can go through the process of applying this process [cross-talk 12:41].
Paul: There’s still like 13 more steps.
Johnathan: Alright, well…
Paul: Those are just step one and two.
Johnathan: Alright. So, we’ll just do our best and of course you can stay on some bonus content. So, we got a lot to go through in the second half of the show folks. We’ll back in a few moments.
We’re coming back. I need to do my adverts for our sponsors, which I forgot to do at the beginning of the show. So, we’re going to start off with Kingsta. And Kingsta only supports WordPress websites. They’ve supporting WP-Tonic for over three years; I’ve been using their hosting for a couple of years and it’s just fantastic. If you’ve got a learning management system, a WooCommerce site for yourself or for your clients, you need better hosting then what you can get from a lot of hosting companies at the present moment, they will remain nameless but if you go over to Kingsta you’ll find what you’re looking for. And I suggest you do that, not only for yourself, but for your client. Go over there, have a look, what they’ve got over there, you’re going to be blown away. I’m totally happy with their service, highly recommend them. So, go over there by one of their practices and also tell them that you heard about them on the WP tonic show.
Our next sponsor is another great company in the WordPress space and thats WP-Fusion. Now, if you got an external CRM system or active campaign, there’s a host of them actually WP-Fusion supports over 200 different companies’ services, which is amazing in its own fact. But what’s the really important thing if you’re into marketing automization and you’re using WordPress with an external CRM, you need WP-Fusion. Just go over to their website and learn more about their product, I’m sure… I am definite that you’re just going to be blown away by it. And also tell them when you buy one of their products, not only for yourself, but for your clients, that you heard about them on the WP tonic show. So back up into this great discussion about sales process, which is hardly discussed. And I think a lot of our listeners and viewers, we run small businesses are going to get great value from this discussion with Paul. So, we’ve got a few more steps to discuss, so back over to you, Paul.
Paul: So, before I move into this, I need to remind people that this information, even though it was not developed by me, has been utilized over the last 14 years to create literally millions of dollars in sales from the stage. And I don’t say that to impress you, I say that to impress upon you that this is what I call the world’s greatest offer template that you can utilize in any presentation situation to get more sales. I charge people $4,000 for a three-day course to do this and other presentation strategies and I’ve trained over 500 speakers to do just that. Many of them who in their first presentation go out and literally make thousands of dollars in sales where they’ve never made sales before. So it’s very, very powerful, and I would highly encourage people not to underestimate its efficacy in this particular situation, especially today, when we’re all doing presentations, when we’re all trying to sell our products and services in a world full of noise, it cuts through the BS and goes straight to somebody’s subconscious.
It really hinges on people’s subconscious and the way they psychologically filter offers. So, it has been worked over the years by myself and my colleagues, but it was developed initially by some very powerful people so, I highly recommend that people research this and I actually have a whole course in My That’s Ambitious program that goes through this. So, step one, just to review, the transition is move from a step-by-step content, don’t take any questions, move into the problem and offer up the solution, ask permission then to talk about the product. The next step is to actually name the product, and by the way, a name and a brand is very important in this situation so as soon as you get the psychological, yes, please tell us about it. It’s like it’s called Groundhogg. And you just say it just like that. It’s called Groundhogg.
And if you need to do a qualifier in that, you can do that, but just name the product. Next, round up your audience. You know how they used to corral horses, right with riding round them in horses and they’ve got like lassos and they’re corralling horses, you have to do that with your audience and how do you do that with an audience? You call them by name. This is for entrepreneurs, business owners, startups, digital marketing officers, doctors, lawyers, consultants, teachers, brothers, fathers, sisters, cousins, friends, name them. And if somebody in your audience hears their name, they’re going, oh, that’s for me. If you don’t round up your audience, they’re sitting there going. I wonder if this works for me, but if you actually name your audience, you’re rounding them up. And it’s not for everybody. It’s for these specific.
If you’re trying to sell to everyone, Jonathan, you’re selling to no one. Round up your specific audience and they will pay attention next. Now we lay out what they’ll learn, what they’ll get or, what the product will do. And the key benefits of each. So, for example, if Adrian is talking about Groundhogg, well actually, you know, let’s switch topics because I love Groundhogg as a product, but let’s talk about maybe That’s Ambitious, right? My membership course. How do I lay out the key benefits? You will learn a step by step formula on how to sell any product or any service in five minutes at the end of your next presentation, to create a minimum of 10 to 20, maybe even 15, 20% of your audience will buy within the first hour. You see what I did? Basically said, you’re going to learn this thing to get this result, you’re going to get this product that gets this result, you’re going to learn how to do this specific thing that get this specific result and you got to have five or six, really strong, really well developed bullet points so that people go, I think I need that. Not I know I need that. I think I need that.
Next. It’s tough to do, but you’re going to have to figure out a way to give them proof. So, if you’re giving step by step instructions to people in the content portion of your seminar or your webinar or your podcast, you’re giving step by step instructions, sometimes that’s enough for people. But in many cases, they’re going want to know who else uses this? Has anybody used this and got a measurable result? And so you need to throw in a couple of testimonials and you literally like, if you can throw them up on the screen or read them and give the name of the person and the name of the website that it’s on, the name of the company that’s using it. That’s enough proof for people to go, okay, they’re in, I’ll give it a shot. So, the template is in this order, by the way, don’t put the testimonials up front, don’t put the, you know, ask permission upfront, it’s got to be in the same order.
And if you want the exact order, I have a course in That’s Ambitious, it’s like $49, I’ll give them a coupon code. It’ll actually run them through this step by step and I actually make an offer in the course. It’s a two-hour course, and it’s probably the most exciting sales course you’ve ever seen in your life. It’s very, very step by step and it’ll show you the ins and outs. So, I’m going through it quickly but if you want to go through the details, you want to actually make an offer in real time, go take that course in That’s Ambitious. It’s called Sales Training. It’s exactly what it is, h how to make sales. Okay? Now…
Johnathan: That’s a fabulous price… What’s.
Paul: Yeah, it’s like $49. If you can’t get a $49,000 idea from a $49 course, you’re not listening. You didn’t take the course. It’s like six sections, you have to go through it, there’s a workbook, you make your own offer while the course is going through and I charge $49. Why? Because I don’t need your $49. I just need you to invest something. Does that make sense? Invest something. So, let’s move on. So, testimonials are done. Now you got to knock these things down again one by one. First, you have to tell them the actual price or tuition. So, for example, That’s Ambitious, our tuition is $99 a month. That’s it. Now they’ve got a benchmark, right? And if they’re thinking, oh my God, $99, how can I afford that? That’s way too expensive. Why we’re doing a live seminar? Our Train the Trainer Course is $3,997. Let that burn a hole in their subconscious okay. So all you got to do, you don’t have to go, well, I think that’s too expensive, you could throw them with what I call a comparison price, there are other programs out there that you could pay $10,000 for our tuition is $3,997.
Okay. Next introduce future bonuses. Right now, they’re not bonuses, they’re just alternatives. So, for those of you who that doesn’t work for, we have, you can purchase this course for $49, you can purchase that course for $49, whatever have at least two or three options what I call future bonuses, why are they called future bonuses? Because you’re going to include them in the tuition at the final offer. Does that make sense? So right now, they’re just options. People are going, oh, well I can’t really afford the $99 a month or the $3,997 for the course, but I can afford $49. You see how you see what’s happening here? Okay. Now you got to give them a reason to give them a deal, you can’t just give them a deal you got to give them a reason why it’s on sale, right?
Sidewalk sale means just that it’s a sidewalk sale. It only happens when there’s a sidewalk sale. That’s a reason. It’s a shortened amount of time. Adrian goes on Buddy Boss; he gave them an offer. Why? Because I was invited by Buddy Boss and they made me treat you well. I was invited here by Jonathan Denwood. He promised that if I was going to talk about anything that I could give you some type of discount and I’m going to do well by him, reason for the deal. That makes sense. And the reason it could be anything it’s the last time I’m going to be doing it for a while, it’s the first time I’m doing it, and I want to make sure the course is filled, there’s a whole pile of reasons that I’ve worked out over the years that that will actually work.
You can even blame it on the weather if you want it to. I have to give you a deal because it’s Vancouver and it’s the only sunny day of the year and I know that you took time out of your life to come here and see me on a sunny day. By the way, just one time I went to Vancouver for a presentation, I had 75 people registered right in the days when we were still doing presentations, five people showed up. I asked the person in the front row, I showed them the registration list I said where are all these people? And the guy goes, didn’t you hear? And I go hear what? And he goes, it’s sunny outside. Next. Give them a limitation. If you don’t give them a limitation, which is time or a quantity like Adrian gave them 25 people. What happened? Adrian?
Johnathan: You are muted, actually.
Paul: All 25 people signed up. Why? Because there’s 150 people on the call.
Adrian: Exactly.
Paul: So, exactly. That’s a limitation, right? You say, well, for the first 25 people and people were like, if you don’t give them a limitation they’d be like, oh, let me think about it and then they’ll miss ou.t all the people that emailed Adrian when they missed out on the deal saying, where’s my deal and Adrian said it was for 25 people. Where were you? You had two hours to make that decision, right? So, the offer is good till midnight, the offer is good for the first 25 people, whatever. Next. Now you include the alternative programs when you purchase, not if when you purchase today, you can get into That’s Ambitious for $99, but we’ll include this, which is $49, this which is $49, and this webinar, just for the people that are on today for this mastermind or whatever at a value of $200, make the value of the bonuses twice, as much as the actual offer that you’re making them but things that don’t cost you money just for your time.
Then what you have to do is you have to offer them payment options. We take visa, MasterCard, American express, PayPal, Firstborn Child, IOUs, checks, personal checks, company checks, whatever you give them a list of all the things you’ll take, because they don’t know what to do. They’re like, oh, I don’t know how to pur…can I pay with PayPal? name it, you have to name it. Next. Give them a guarantee. A hundred percent. You have 14 days to do this thing or without a single question, I will personally go into the payment section and refund your money. You don’t need to tell me why you, don’t need to give me a bunch of reasons, you just need to go. This is what’s called risk reversal and it reverses all the risk from them and puts it onto you. So now they’re getting $400 worth of value for 99 bucks and they get 14 days to try it out. What’s there to think about Jonathan?
Johnathan: Not a lot.
Paul: Thank you. Next. Close…
Johnathan: If they really serious about buying the product there isn’t
Paul: Yes. Thank you. Well, they should be if they’re still here at the end of the presentation.
Johnathan: Well, people are strange animals Paul as you know.
Paul: Well, it’s not for everybody, but if you rounded up your audience properly, there’s a good chance because of this template that they’ll still be here, right and that’s what we are…
Johnathan: I don’t know how big Buddy Boss’s email list was, I don’t know how big it can be. I know they’ve got a quite a large Facebook community. It’s just interesting that they… I don’t know how long the webinar was promoted or how effectively they promoted the webinar, I’m trying to get more involved in webinars and forcing myself to do one every month, just as a learning exercise.
Adrian: So, there’s a couple things to know about just the registration process, not the close, which is what we’re talking about here, which is when people are already on the webinar but in terms of the preregistration process for people, by the way, we had more people at the end of the webinar for the buddy bus than we did at the beginning because people showed up late but, but we had a very low, a very small number of people left the call because we had more people at the end of the call than we did the beginning so there’s something to be said for the template, being able to keep people engaged. So, I’ll just throw that out there, there’s only ever like a 30% show up rate, there’s a 60% no show rate. That’s just the end of it. We had 600 people actually registered and we had 150 or something actually show. So that’s actually a little bit less than 30%…
Johnathan: And how long was they promoting for actually?
Adrian: That was with a 14-day promotion period. So, people have a really hard time committing to things that are too far out and they have a difficult time committing to things that are two too close. So, 14 to what’s three weeks? So, 14 plus [inaudible 29:38] 14 to 21 days is kind of like the sweet spot of in terms of commitment, making a commitment level. So yeah, just that I closed, no I going throw those numbers out there for preregistration.
Paul: I think Adrian makes a great point. It’s you got to get people on the thing or you got no one to make an offer to. So, let’s assume that your content was engaging, let’s assume you’ve rounded up your audience and let’s assume people are still here. If they’re still here, the template holds, make sure you offer them a very sound, very guarantee that makes sense. Don’t assume that they know that there is one don’t assume they’ve gone to your website and read your terms and conditions, don’t assume that they know anything about that, you have to state it very clearly. So, then you have to tell them what to do, which is what I call the call to action. If you just say, go buy, that’s not good enough, you have to tell them where, you have to give them a specific URL, if they’re on a zoom call, you have to give them a very simple URL to follow, you have to post it in the chat area, you have to send it by email, you have to follow up, follow up, follow up but you basically in the call say, you’re going to go to this webpage, you’re going to click this button, you’re going to put in this coupon code and you’re going to use the payment options that we laid out for you.
Johnathan: We’re going to have to call it a day for the podcast part of the show because to keep it around 30 minutes to 35 minutes but hopefully you can stay on for some bonus content because we only scratched the surface of this. You have to also come back again because it is a big subject, I love all also to talk about how to get the audience to the presentation as well because I think our audience and everybody in the WordPress community needs to know how to do that. So, Paul, how can they find out more about you? And also, maybe also can say how about the sales calls that you offer for a very reasonable price as well?
Paul: Go to thatsambitious.com. Why is it called That’s Ambitious? Because it’s a very ambitious program and that’s what my wife called it after we came up with the concept. There is well over a hundred hours of training in there. If you go to thatsambitious.com and you use the coupon code WP-Tonic, which should be easy to remember, coupon code WP-Tonic on any product, including membership and single or multiple courses that you just want to purchase, it’s 50% off that.
Johnathan: Well, that’s a fantastic offer. Thank you for that offer t to our tribe. I think of course I would… offer that I might take up eventually. So, if you listening listeners, beloved listeners and viewers, just that you take it up. Adrian is being very quiet, but a well obviously bring going through a lot of stuff. So, Adrian, how can people find out more about you and your great product?
Adrian: So, you can find me at with two gs.io, where you can pick up some pretty nifty software that’ll help you launch your funnel, grow your list and scale your business.
Johnathan: And join us for the bonus content that we’re going to be going through with Paul. How do you listen to that? Go to the WP-Tonic YouTube channel. That’s the quickest, place I’d put the bonus and the full interview on and also register our YouTube channel. Tribe is increasingly, increased last month considerably. So, go to the WP-Tonic YouTube channel and also register that really helps the show. And you get notification of all the shows that are on the WP-Tonic YouTube channel automatically so that’s a great benefit as well. We’ll see you next week. We have a method break guest and another great interview. See you soon folks. Bye.
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