Ryan Holmer’s Monthly Newsletter: Issue #5

October 16th
From the desk of Ryan Holmer
Halifax, Nova Scotia

SALES, SALES AND MORE SALES...

W​elcome to the fifth edition of the monthly newsletter.

The past month has been my busiest of the year, for more reasons
than one. If you’ve been a subscriber for a while, you know from
the last issue that I recently hired some new coaches. Well,
over the past month we’ve learned a ton of new strategies that
we’ve been implementing, so I’m pumped to share some of these
new ideas with you in this newsletter.

Beyond that -- and not that you care -- I recently found a new
place, and will be moving to Calgary, Alberta November 2nd. In
my prior letters, I spoke about the importance of optimizing
one's environment. Halifax just wasn’t cutting it for me. The
weather is crappy, it’s a student town and in general, it’s not
an ideal place to run a business. In Calgary, I’m close to the
mountains, fresh air, and living in a province that is flush
with money, and business opportunities.

Anyways, I know you didn’t invest in this newsletter to hear me

ramble about where I’m living. This month, I’m going to focus on
three topics.

1. Sales
2. Business models & offers
3. Our funnel strategy

No more 6-topic newsletters. I want you to really hone in and

focus on specific things in the coming month ahead. So in this
newsletter, I’m going to focus on the aforementioned topics, and
dive into some new things I’ve learned about them, things I'm
testing, and how you can apply them to your own business.

I’m pretty excited about this edition, and as usual -- if you

have any burning questions about this issue, be sure to shoot me
an email, and I’ll help you get sorted.

Also, at the end of this newsletter I have a juicy little offer

for you. You can choose to take part, or ignore it - no
pressure, but I wanted to get it out to you in case you’re
interested.

No harm, no foul.

Ryan
 MODELS & OFFERS

Arguably the biggest change in my own business, has been the

transition from running a Done-For-You (DFY) agency, to a
business which operates under the Done-With-You (DWY) model.

For those of you who don’t know, DFY work means that you’re
actually providing a turnkey service for someone. You’re,
well...doing the work for them. Done with you, means that you’re
not doing it for them, rather you’re doing it with them --
thinking of it like coaching.

In terms of marketing, the tactics are the same. The overarching

strategy is the same. Everything else, however, is completely
different.

Now, for the longest time we ran a DFY agency, and were happy.
Money was coming in, business was growing, but we hit a key
important bottlenecks. Our revenue per hour was decreasing,
because as you scale a DFY agency, you need to hire a
proportionate amount of staff in the form of contractors.

Scaling a DFY agency beyond a certain threshold is difficult,

unless of course you’re looking to operate a business with
massive overhead, and be responsible for managing dozens of
staff.

That’s not what I, nor my business partner was really after. We

want an office, to have a solid team, but we have no intention
of scaling a DFY agency to $500,000/month.

One of the things our new mentors have really stressed in us,
was the necessity of improving our business model. From 0$ to
$100,000/month, one of the most important and deciding factors
determining whether or not you’re going to scale, is your
business model. How scalable is it?

Our model wasn’t very scalable.

And that’s one of the reasons we had countless months of
stagnation (zero revenue growth)and even had months where we let
clients go due to our inability to spend time with them.

Needless to say, it was time to change things up.

The model we’re switching to now is group coaching, or DWY.

Let’s look at some of the benefits of DWY:

1. More clients
2. Scalable
3. More money
4. Less staff & overhead
5. Better margins

The downsides?

1. Lack of control (you can’t deliver the results for the

client)

Now, here’s what I’ll say about the downside -- and it’s
something our mentors have harped on. Instinctively, you’d think
that building a DWY offer would lead to worse client results,
because they’re doing it themselves, instead of you, the expert.

But this would be inaccurate.

When someone has to do something themselves, there are a few

innate benefits.

1. They’re more driven

2. They have more skin in the game
3. It’s a skill which lasts them a lifetime

One of the problems with DFY, is that if you die -- god forbid
-- your clients are left with nothing. They have this system
which they don’t know how to operate, they have no long-lasting
skills which they can use for the rest of their life/career.
I’m of the thought that we should teach a man how to fish, not
give him a fish.

Anyways…

I know you’re probably asking, how to best structure a DWY

offer, right?

How we’re structuring ours, is by creating a 12-week program,

where we provide our clients with video resources, live calls,
Q&As, etc…It’s far less time-intensive, but the result is the
same -- clients transforming their business.

At the end of the 12 weeks, we’re going to upsell our clients

into a higher-level mastermind, with a high-ticket price, in
order to increase client lifetime value, and help them
supercharge their results further.

I think the ideal length for any sort of program, based on what
I’ve seen is 12-weeks. Any longer and your revenue per hour sort
of goes down, and any shorter, your clients might not extract
the right amount of value.

A quick caveat with DWY offers before I move onto the

transition, and when to transition: your DFY avatar might not be
the same as your DWY avatar.

Our ideal done for you client was someone banking $50K/month,
around the ages of 50+. Someone who is 55 years old, banking
$50K/month is ​not ​going to want to do shit on his own, he’s
going to want a turnkey system.

So we had to rewrite our advertising copy, and tweak our avatar

to target people who are younger, with less money, who have the
drive & willingness to do it themselves.

Just keep this in mind if you ever do make the transition.

And if you don’t have a client avatar yet, I suggest you spend a
few hours working on one, and honing in on exactly who you want
to work with (your ideal client).

Now, you’re probably thinking about asking two questions -- when

should you transition, and how should you transition?

Let me answer each.

And as another quick caveat here, we are in the process of

transitioning, so take my advice to heart, but know that we’re
not experts at DWY yet.

When should you transition?

After a client or two.

Ideally, you get a client, get proof of concept (results), get

another DFY client, record the entire process, and turn that
into your DWY offer.

Sometimes, I know certain people want to spend a few months

building up their DFY agency as a way to sort of hone their
offer, and become the leader in their industry.

That’s fine too.

Just know that it’s never too late to make the transition. It
really depends on what workload you’re comfortable with. Some
people are fine managing a 30-client DFY agency, others are
tired of it at 2 clients. So whatever you’re comfortable with,
just do that.

How do you transition?

We’re currently doing this right now.

We’re keeping our current roster of DFY clients, which we’ve

trimmed down a bit.
We didn’t go out and build this DWY program right off the bat
though - no, no no, that’s not what you want to do. That’s
actually the worst thing you could do.

Imagine spending 50 hours building a program, only to have zero

sales?

Yikes.

We went out and sold someone into our program, before having it
built. Then we built it as a beta.

“Yeah, the program launches in 2-weeks, and we’ll drop a new

video every few days.” This is the exact same way I built my
Facebook ads course; I launched it, took sales, then built it as
time went on.

You want to prove your idea before creating it.

Make sense?

Great.

Any specific questions about this, reply to this email and I'll
get back to you. That’s part of the benefit of being subscribed
-- I’ll answer ANY and ALL questions about topics covered in
this newsletter.

SALES

You’re probably sick of me writing about sales.

Well, too bad!

It’s an important topic that I’m continually being asked about

by some of the subscribers to this newsletter. I also recently
hired a closer for my agency, so it’s a topic I’ve been diving
headfirst into the past few weeks. Add to that my lifelong
obsession with sales, and I’m becoming more of a sales addict
then every before!

In this section, I want to focus on some high ticket sales tips

that I’ve picked up over the past few weeks, and that come
directly from our sales script.

Over the years, we’ve picked up tricks from various sources, and
have implanted them into our sales script to create a sort of
FrankenMonsterScript.

We give this information to each new sales hire, so I thought it

would be useful to relay to you.

We call these our Sales Rules.

It’s a list of 10 or so items that our closers have to be aware

of before each call, and during each call. We listen to their
calls afterwards to ensure they’re keeping these things in mind.

We’re pretty ruthless about adherence to these rules.

1. Take time between responses

This is a newly added “rule” that we got from our current

mentors, when they closed us. After each response I gave, their
closer would wait 3-4 seconds before responding.

He’d say “Just taking notes.”

The silence was uncomfortable, but here’s the thing -- silence

is a powerful pattern interrupt, which disrupts the flow of the
call, and prevents you from overtalking.

We’ve just started implementing this, and have noticed a

tangible improvement in our positioning on calls.

2. Don’t interrupt the prospect when they’re talking

This one should seem obvious, but it’s not.

I can’t tell you how many calls I’ve listened to where I heard
the salesman ITCHING to respond with a preloaded response, ever
before the prospect was done speaking.

You want to pause in between their reply, and your answer (rule
#1), as to prevent yourself from doing this.

Another way to prevent yourself from doing this, is to put

yourself on mute after you ask a question, so that you protect
yourself from your instinctive desire to blabber.

3. Ask one question at a time

You don’t want to confuse your prospect, do you?

The worst thing you can do is ask “So tell me about X. Also,
what do you think about Y? And how about Z?”

Be concise.

People have this urge to wander in their thoughts. If you ask

the prospect one thing, he may talk about 2 others, so it’s
important to hone in their focus on 1 question, get an answer,
then and only then should you move on to the next.

4. Release attachment to yes.

The best way to screw up a call, is to have some sort of desired

outcome in mind.

The best salespeople I know are immune to falling into the trap
of having expectations. Similar to pickup, when you are
dependent on ann outcome, it not only ruins your chances of
closing the sale, but it also has a higher likelihood of putting
you into a rut.
When you try to push the sale, the sale gets further away. And
when your identity is based on whether or not you close a sale,
you’ll feel like shit when you don’t close deals.

In other words, you’ll close less deals and feel like shit
because of your dependence on an outcome. The problem with
outcome dependence, is that it forces you to not always do
what's in the prospects best interest.

Have no outcome in mind.

Focus on what is best for the client -- whether that’s buying

your service, delaying it for a few months until their finance
improve, or referring the prospect to someone better suited to
solve their problems.

You need to think about the client first and foremost.

You’re secondary.

5. Use a pen & paper to take notes

This is an old school tip from my old mentor. As we write, we

retain. When we retain, we ask our prospects better questions,
and they actually feel like we care about them (which we do).

Beyond that though, this also helps with pacing.

When you write with a pen & paper, your responses will be
slower, as you’ll actively be writing down what the person is
saying.

This is another sly way of forcing yourself to speak slower,

pace your conversation, and utilize the power of silence.

6. Don’t get buddy buddy

Conventional & mainstream sales education tells you to build

rapport.
But, there is such a thing as too much rapport.

If someone close to you tells you you’re fat, will you heed
their advice to lose weight? Probably not.

But if your fitness coach walks up to you and says “Listen Tim,
you’re 40 pounds overweight. You have GOT to lose that weight,
unless you want to die.”

Will you listen?

Hell yeah.

Because your coach is coming from the leadership frame, whereas

your wife is too close to you. There’s too much rapport.

This was a huge mistake I used to have.

I went on a 3-minute tangent once with a guy who was asking me

about the beautiful women of Eastern Europe.

My business partner Ben laughed at me.

It was a stupid mistake that I’ve since learned from.

7. Brevity is huge.

The prospect should be talking more than you, since YOU are the
one asking questions.

I mention this alot.

You should be speaking 10-20% of the time, the prospect, maybe

80-90%. Part of this list of rules has been designed to help
limit the amount of time you’re speaking, so this shouldn’t be a
surprise.

The more you talk, the higher the chances of you screwing
something up. I don’t say that to be rude, but it’s a fact.
8. Don’t focus on being smooth. Focus on being real.

A lot of people are concerned about being smooth, being suave

and being completely on point 100% of the time. People resonate
with humans, not robots.

A while back I had a public speaking lesson with a member of our

Twittersphere. He told me something along the lines of “People
actually resonate more with you if you throw in the occasional
stutter, uhms, likes, and filler words. Don’t be afraid to use
them.”

I’m not saying speak like an idiot.

But, don’t be worried about messing up. It’s 100% natural, and
will not be a detriment to your sales call.

Bonus: Sales In A Nutshell

My readership of this newsletter varies.

Some of you have closes multiple high-ticket clients, others

maybe haven’t yet.

So I want to give you my little theory on sales, and hopefully

this section will help you see sales from a new perspective, and
understand some of the theory behind what sales is, and what
goes into the sales process (the strategy call).

Most people see sales as a means to an end. The person on the

other end of the call is a giant dollar sign. Their only purpose
is to buy your product or service and deposit money into your
bank account.

This is desperation, and usually comes from a position of

scarcity, not abundance.

Beyond that, however, this is a fundamental misconception about

what sales really is.
The people who sell like this give everyone else a bad name.

I’ve heard ​horror stories from people who’ve been sold snake oil
by a salesman. Now, this salesmen may have been
well-intentioned, but they also could have been poorly trained
by their manager.

Sales isn’t about pushing a product, or a service.

You’re not a product salesman. You’re not a service salesman.

The goal of sales is to do what’s best for the person on the

other end of the phone.

This means you need to go into any phone call, without any
preconceived beliefs, goals, or objectives (aka, as I said above
- outcome INdependence).

As a salesman, you have a lot of power.

You could use all the tactics in the world to get someone’s
money from them, but if buying your solution, your product or
widget isn’t in their best interest, you’re doing something I’d
call morally reprehensible.

As a Doctor, would you prescribe medicine to someone without

knowing what’s ailing them?

No. That’s illegal (I think).

The Doctor will take a look at you. Ask you questions. Send you
for tests. Then, and only then will they come up with an
accurate diagnosis.

Unfortunately, most salesmen don’t act like Doctors. They act

like the pharmaceutical reps, which means they’re not acting in
the best interest of the client.
So many (read -- most) of your issues with sales could be solved
by completely rewiring the way you think about sales as a whole.

I’m not lying when I say sales is 99% mindset.

There are no tactics, or hacks that will have you closing 99% of
your deals.

But the right mindset will get you on the right path towards
closing more deals, and most importantly -- helping more people
achieve their desired transformation.

The reason I always emphasize transformations, is because

everyone has a desired transformation they want -- whether it’s
weight loss, money gains, or whatever...there’s always
something.

On the left, you have where they currently are, and on the right
you have where they want to be. In diagnosing what’s right and
best for a prospect, often it’ll be taking them from the left
(hell) to the right (heaven).

If it’s within your power to help them with this transformation,

your goal is to make that known, and do what’s best for them
(show them the cost of not working with you).

The important thing to keep in mind, is that if it’s not within

your ability to help them, if it’s beyond the scope of what you
do, or if they’re so far in hell that working with you will
bankrupt them, it’s your duty to point them in the right
direction.

I know I keep harping on this, but I can’t stress enough how

important it is to be ethical, and to do what’s right. Because
the funny thing is, the more “honorable” and honest you are, the
more deals you’ll close, and the less ruts you’ll get into.

Ever heard the poker saying “tilt”?

Salesmen are often in ruts, or calling on tilt because they have

an expected outcome.

My goal with this section, was to help you avoid that by

focusing on what’s best for the client.

Whew. Engarin this section into your mind, because I don’t want
to keep beating a dead horse.

Sales Conclusion

I could have sold these 8 little rules for $100 on my email

list, but I gave them to you instead. They’re small in
appearance, but massive in effect.

These 8 adjustments to your sales game will absolutely “move the

needle” so to speak. Because when it comes to sales, it’s not
HUGE SWEEPING ADJUSTMENTS that lead to significant change, it’s
small, incremental improvements.

That’s exactly why I’ve provided you with the same 8 rules we
give to our closers.

Do with them what you will.

SCALING FUNNEL STRATEGY

Now, we’re at the final section of the October edition of this

newsletter, and I figured I’d talk about scaling through
paid-traffic because that’s what we’re currently doing.

Today, October 16th, we just launched 40 new ads, for a new

campaign we’re testing for our DWY offer (you’re getting this
newsletter in real-time, showing our real strategies, as we test
them).

I don’t want to walk you over the exact funnel we’re using, but
I do want to talk about our thinking behind the campaign we’re
launching.

You see…

Facebook is making some huge changes moving forward. Facebook

wants to move towards improving the user experience even more.

What does that mean for marketers?

It means less friction.

What does less friction mean?

Glad you asked!

It means less friction between the user, and enjoyment.

In tactical terms, this means:

No opt ins.
More relevant content.

Because of this, we’ve had to adapt the way we approach scaling.

Webinars are still around, and they still work, but I sort of
feel like Facebook is heading further away from an environment
where Webinars are the ideal tool.

They’re long. You can’t control the process, and people don’t
have the time to sit through 1hr 45min long presentations.

Our system utilizes two videos.

One is a 5-minute long training.

The other? A 15-minute long value video.

But here’s the kicker…

We have no opt-in for the first training. None. Zip. Nada.

It’s a 100% completely free, ungated training.

People can hop on our landing page, look at the video, watch it,
spend 5-minutes on our site (high retention rate), and then
decide if they want to opt in for an advanced training.

Facebook is moving away from required opt-ins, I think (and

again, this is my opinion, so don’t hold me to it).

This is going to make traditional scaling different.

There’s going to be less opt-ins, and more of a focus on

retargeting people who land on your page, and those who do
choose to opt-in (plus emailing them regularly).

I don’t know why we decided to use an ungated video to be

honest. I think we just wanted to take this whole Intent Based
Branding idea, and see if we could apply it to a funnel.

It worked fantastic.

We were generating:

● $10 leads
● $100-$150 strategy calls

Then, when we compared these to webinar metrics, they absolutely

destroyed them cost-wise.

So we told ourselves…
“We’re never doing a webinar again!”

And this discovery, to be honest, completely altered what we do

for clients. We used to build webinars for them, which took
about a month. Now, we get clients the same results, for an even
higher cost (we raised our prices) for half the time.

The reason I bring this up isn’t to brag.

It’s to help you start thinking about scaling on Facebook

differently. I know not all of you are at a point where you’re
ready to scale, but some of you are.

You’re at a point where you’re starting to ask yourself…

“How can I get leads coming in, on demand?”

Maybe you’re contemplating a webinar, a vsl funnel, or something

else. Who knows.

But what I want you to realize is that Facebook is looking to

reduce friction between users, and decisions. Less opt-ins, more
free (video) content.

To give you an idea, here’s what our current funnel looks like
from a 30,000 foot view.

Now, obviously there’s retargeting built in, and a few email

sequences, but this is the jist of our not-so-secret “top
secret” system that we’ve been using for months now to generate
insane results on a cost per lead and cost per strategy call
basis.
You can definitely take this flow chart above, and go apply this
system for yourself. I didn’t hide any steps above (aside from
the retargeting).

You can spend thousands of dollars honing this system yourself.

Or, you can take me on the offer I’m about to tell you about.

(There’s no sales pressure here, I’m just letting you know about
it. I’m only opening up 10 spots, and between my email list, and
here, the spots might be gone quickly).

Clearly, explaining this system in depth through this newsletter

format would be insane, and beyond the scope of what I’m trying
to accomplish here.

I hope you get that.

I’d be writing for years!

Instead, I’m going to create a program around showing you

exactly how to use this system to build your own reliable,
predictable client acquisition machine.

I’m going to show you every aspect of our system.

1. The tech stuff

a. Funnels
b. Integration
c. Videos
2. The tactical stuff
a. Running ads
b. Writing copy for ads
c. Writing video copy
d. Writing email copy
3. Enrollment
a. Closing more deals
b. Improving your conversion rate
 c. Pre-qualifying leads
d. Framing your sales calls

Basically, in short, you’re going to discover how to use our

system, and how to actually close the leads that come in.

Nothing more, nothing less.

The investment to join this program, and snag one of the 10

spots is $497. The next batch of students, will be required to
fork over their left kidney (kidding) and $997.

I’m going to leave it there.

If you want to take me up on this offer, shoot me a reply to

this email. If not, and you’re so angry with me that I would
dare offer you something, then go ahead and email me that you
want to unsubscribe from this email.

I mean, if the sales section alone didn’t provide you with

enough value, nothing will!

Again, no harm. Like your father, I’ll love you all the same ;).

CONCLUSION

Fin.

The fifth issue has concluded, and my fingers are sore. I’m
still trying to figure out how to best structure these
newsletters in order for you to suck out the most value, so be
sure to shoot me a message if you like the format, or if you
absolutely hate it.

Also -- be sure to tell me which stage of building your business

at, so I can cater the content here to serve you. The idea
behind this newsletter was to give you an insight into my
business, my strategies, and techniques that I’m not really
sharing elsewhere. I think I’ve done that by giving you insight
into a few sales rules we give our closers, and by giving you
some information regarding our switch to a DWY agency and how
you can do it as well.

One of my favourite parts of this newsletter is answering your

Qs. And in case you didn’t know, you can send me emails in
regards to anything in this issue, and get an answer to it --
that’s one of the perks of being a subscriber. So don’t hesitate
about reaching out to me. ​I WANT TO HELP YOU.

In any case, if you have any questions about anything I wrote

here, or want me to expand on it, just send me a direct message
on Twitter, or shoot me an email to
ryan@affluentattraction.com​,or anywhere else you can find me.

Until next month!

- Ryan Holmer

PS: I’d love your feedback on this months newsletter. So send me

an email -- tell me what you think! I value your feedback.