SPI 777: Making More Sales and Talking Funnels with Ben Harris from ClickFunnels

SPI 777: Making More Sales and Talking Funnels with Ben Harris from ClickFunnels

Ben Harris: There just needs to be more content that is not selling, but it’s teaching. If you were able to teach something, something new or something they didn’t know beforehand, you were, in one, building rapport and creating a superfan. But two, you are now viewed as an authoritative figure because you’ve now taught them something, and you were positioned differently.

You have to bridge people from people who don’t know you to people who know you. And in order to do that, it is going to be somebody that you might have to lead with a problem because they don’t know you. And then go to the solution you can provide, then the product.

Pat Flynn: How do we make more sales for our product? There’s a million different ways to go about it, but I wanted to bring somebody on the show today to talk about some specific strategies, some basic and some more advanced to give you light to some other options that you might have that you might not be exploring yet.

And we talk about everything from little groups and communities that you can use to then upsell or upserve into as well as book offers. And today we’re talking with Ben Harris from ClickFunnels. Yes, ClickFunnels is a software tool out there that can help you with creating funnels, getting more sales.

It is a tool that I personally don’t use, but a lot of people do. And after speaking with Ben on the team for a little bit, he just was a plethora of knowledge that I knew that I wanted to bring on the show. And ClickFunnels is a great tool. I’ve heard a number of great things about it from a number of people.

I know John Lee Dumas uses it and several others. But most of all, I just wanted to download what was happening on their end in terms of what’s working and what’s not from their clients who use the tool. And so whether you use the tool or not, you’re going to get some value from this episode. This is session 777 of the SPI podcast and here he is, Ben Harris from ClClickFunnels.com.

Announcer: You’re listening to the Smart Passive Income Podcast, a proud member of the Entrepreneur Podcast Network, a show that’s all about working hard now, so you can sit back and reap the benefits later. And now your host, he uses four screens when he hosts a webinar in his office. Pat Flynn.

Pat Flynn: Ben, welcome to SPI. Thanks for being here, man.

Ben Harris: Awesome. I am so excited to be here, and I appreciate you having me.

Pat Flynn: ClickFunnels, who you work with, is an incredible company. We’ve heard about it for years now. How old is ClickFunnels? It’s been around for a while, I feel like.

Ben Harris: Coming up on a decade, so it’s kind of, yeah, 2014. Gone by like that, but yeah. In our industry, right, months seem like years sometimes. Call it ClickFunnels time sometimes.

Pat Flynn: What I love about ClickFunnels and what you do for your users is you have this thing called like the comma club, right? The two comma club, the three comma club. This is to reward your users and kind of how far they’ve come and what they’re doing to grow their business.

Do you have any recent comma club members that have stood out to you and maybe like, what are they doing and how have ClickFunnels helped them?

Ben Harris: Oh, great question. The two comma club award was designed maybe with a Dan Kennedy-ism. I guess obviously, you know, Dan being one of Russell’s mentors throughout, you know, his online marketing journey and work that I myself had came into even before I knew who Russell Brunson or ClickFunnels was, but really identifying what that finish line looks like, right?

You know, the four minute mile, right? When Roger Bannister ran the four minute mile and then hundreds of people did, it’s the person to accomplish it. And really sets that standard of, you know, I want that we get people coming into ClickFunnels and even moving platforms over to ClickFunnels just because they’re like, I got to get that award.

Like, I want that. Or like my friends got it. I got to get it too. And we’ve seen people from so many different walks of life, get these awards from physical products, coaching programs, agencies, info products, you know, kind of like how you got your start in the info product game and one that I recently, just for the question that, that does come to mind.

And this is gonna hit on a few different questions here today, is they’ve actually been teaching business owners and individuals how to profit through their Facebook group, and they’ve got their entire, you know, value ladder, right? A low end ebook that they sell that sends people all the way to their high ticket, you know, done for you programs.

But it’s a very interesting, and I think there’s a window of opportunity when it comes to this type of business model, although the foundational concepts remain the same, but something that to acquire leads for pennies on the dollar right now. Compared to, you know, obviously as Meta advertising costs rise over an interesting year coming up into an election, so there’s a lot of money getting pumped into the market.

So it’s been it’s been a little bit different, right? I’m sure you’ve seen some of the stuff, you know similar in your line of work as well Yeah, Facebook group coaching. I guess it’s been a fun way to not only grow a community but grow your leads as well.

Pat Flynn: That’s really cool. And that’s really smart. It goes along with what we’re going to talk about today, which is You kind of that ladder and how do we get people in the door?

How do we get people from the front office to the back of house stuff, if you will, and the higher ticket items. And when I first heard about the two comma club, it was just like, man, that is really smart. Similar to how YouTube offers a silver plaque to people who get to a hundred thousand or gold for a million.

And it’s just having that to be something to drive to is so smart. So I just wanted to point that out because. All of us can use such a mechanism inside of our business for our people. And then just the name itself is Two Comma Club is just rolls off the tongue so nicely. And I see people whenever I interview.

Sometimes they have the plaque in the background and they’re sporting ClickFunnels. And it’s really amazing. Let’s talk about lead gen. I mean, what’s working today? A lot of what used to work does not anymore, especially from back in 2014. So when we talk about getting people in the door and let’s say, you know, getting them to be on our email list, so then we can nurture them and drive them forward, you said Facebook groups is one way, but like what’s working today. You have a ton of customers who are using the program to figure this out. What, what is it really that’s working today?

Ben Harris: On a scale of one to ten, let’s say like one is very, very basic and then ten is like crazy growth hacky. How extreme do you want me to get in this answer?

Because I can go both ways.

Pat Flynn: Okay, let’s go one, five, ten. We’ll do a few different examples. So what’s the easy way?

Ben Harris: Yeah, with one right now, what used to work, right, is we really would start Facebook ads going to an opt in page. Right, and that was the basic premise that built ClickFunnels into such a gigantic company was that entire idea of let’s identify people who are interested, right, get them to raise their hand of, hey, I would like to learn more of that information, and then send them instantaneously identifying our subscribers, and then send to a low ticket buyer to a hyperactive buyer, right?

Instantly. And within that, obviously liquidating your ad costs. So let’s say it did was 5 to capture an email on your page within selling something for 7. And then another, you know, everyone here knows how sales funnels work. That’s the old way. Right in a way that maybe still could work and I do see some people doing it in the coaching space still pretty effectively but one way and I will Not speak for myself because I have not personally tested this nor have we as a company but I have seen the solo ad space make a little bit of a comeback with obviously buying solo ads And then sending them to a funnel or an offer that would be very similar to something that used to work.

But the acquisition cost is a little bit lower and the quality staying the same to be completely honest with you. And that’s something to where you don’t need to learn any type of ad experience, right? You know, obviously some copy that you’ll have to have on your page, but from ad creative space. Don’t need it right headline space, you know, even with ad descriptions or ad headlines.

You don’t need it. It’s something to where you can find Where your fans are congregating to who has them and send them your way you can get started for just a few dollars there are some brokerage websites out there if you just google them and I know quite a few people, whether they’re a big ClickFunnels affiliate or just a personal friend of mine, that are doing it, and pretty darn well.

It was something that, you know, I learned a long time ago and then didn’t see it, right? Because it was just bad quality, and there still is, right? Like, I want to be very clear within stating that.

Pat Flynn: What’s the strategy? Going to a broker to find Solo ads, yep.

Ben Harris: So maybe like Udemy, and there’s a, I believe, solo ads marketplace or market space.

If you just google it, solo ads, you can find people with quality email lists that are willing to put your offer in front of their audience.

Pat Flynn: Gotcha. Solo ads. So you’re not working through Google AdSense or Google AdWords type of platform, but really like a more private ad that you set up on somebody else’s platform or somebody else’s brand would sponsoring a newsletter account is something like that as well.

Is that kind of what we’re talking about?

Ben Harris: Absolutely. Yeah. So even with, you know, on someone’s newsletter that has a subscriber base of raving fans, sending them to your opt in page and not really going for the sale. Right. It’s really of, Hey, where is my audience congregating? Right. What other pockets on the internet are they involved in?

And then let’s provide value to their audience. And then obviously bring them over to yours. And then, you know, the whole, the whole deal, right. Converting them to a buyer, but obviously giving them, you know, a lifelong subscriber is still very valuable as well.

Pat Flynn: Yeah. We’ve done some email newsletter swaps in the past that have worked really, really well.

And we are in fact, doing that on our podcast and also on our email list. People are buying ad spots on our email list. And it’s interesting because they continue to buy, which probably means it’s working, but we don’t see the results on the other end of it. So you’re saying that this is working and it’s much, much cheaper than what we’re paying for on Facebook or Instagram on those kinds of platforms right now.

Ben Harris: I’m seeing the cost per lead be cheaper with the right audience, with the right offer, which will, you know, obviously involve some exploring and testing there. It’s, it’s our job as marketers is to test. And then, secondly, I would say on Meta or Facebook, you know, we can call it is what it is with the paid traffic instead of going to a sales page, right?

Going to a domain that’s now off app, right off the platform, you’re going to keep them on and you can run ads directly to a Facebook group right now to where they do not leave. The app, right? They don’t leave their browser desktop, whichever method they’re using. They can join it right there, go over to the group and then go through, you know, which I’m sure in all your groups, Pat, you have those onboarding questions towards prompting, you know, where they’re at in their business, their life, what they’re looking to learn, and then obviously prompting them with a lead magnet of, you know, what’s the best email we can send you this free training that Pat has done on how to accomplish X results, without, you know, enter pain, right? Or difficulty. And, you know, using some group funnels as one, but there’s some other tools that are super cheap, if not free, to take those emails, implement them to your autoresponder, you’re off and running. And not only are you capturing that email for pretty darn cheap, you’re also building a group as well.

Double edged sword. So you’re going to be capturing that email, building up that relationship with the person via email, but you’re also having a community to where you can go live. If you do send out an email, you can post maybe a piece of that content in your group as well. With Facebook groups, they have admin assist, and I actually don’t know how long this has been around for, probably quite some time, but it’s something that at ClickFunnels, we’re now utilizing to its full extent, but there’s some automations now that you can implement that just keep the spam away. You know, certain keywords you want to band or if somebody is saying, you know, DM me or if they’re putting an email address in a post or in a comment, you can actually not only automatically remove those, you can ban that person for 24 hours to let them know just, Hey, we don’t allow this.

Please don’t do it again. If they ban a certain, or if they violate rules a certain amount of times, they’re kicked out for a week. And so there’s different things to really maintaining the quality of a Facebook group because, you know, this will probably be no news to you. You got to treat a group like an email list, right?

Maintain that hygiene. If you still emailed every email that you’ve gotten since, you know, you’re starting online marketing, your performance probably wouldn’t be what it is right now, which practicing, you know, probably a lot of stuff that you teach as well. And then third piece, right? Here’s like the growth, growth, hacky one with running paid traffic.

And a lot of people that are using ClickFunnels. I have not a lot, but some that I’ve heard that do it at a very high level, they’re actually running traffic to a order form, right? Let’s just say a book funnel if you’re going to be selling, you know, buying Superfans if you don’t have it get it but going to that and having a two step order form and you actually your cost per lead Is less because you’re capturing the abandoned cart emails of people that are entering name email phone number then going over to the address and credit card form, capturing that lead is actually the cost per lead is a lot lower than running straight to an opt in or a lead magnet right now.

So I’ve heard. I have not done that myself, but in terms of like, it’s an order form disguised for actually capturing leads. If that makes sense. I was trying to illustrate that as best as I could.

Pat Flynn: No, that makes sense. And is this where oftentimes people are doing kind of the free with shipping offer for books as well, just because they know that they can capture that lead and then nurture them into the, some higher end offers from there.

Ben Harris: Exactly. And not even really treating that lead as an abandoned cart, but rather as a lead, you know, like giving them a lead magnet, right. Bringing them through an email automation that is introducing, you know, into you, your backstory, why you’re selling what you sell, why you’re doing what you do. And then maybe even just getting with a book offer, you know. Five or six days later.

Pat Flynn: Maybe we can go with this sort of one, five, ten or sort of like beginner, mid level, advanced sort of sequence as we go along here, because the next steps from here, we get them on our email list. You know, we see a lot of people immediately start selling a multi hundred dollar product from there, and that can work.

And then even a higher ticket item from there as well, which often requires some call or a webinar, at least. But what are you seeing work today in terms of getting a lead to convert to something and something that, ultimately leads to higher lifetime value of that customer. Where, what are you seeing?

And maybe we’ll start again, beginner, middle, advanced. If you’d like.

Ben Harris: That’s a great question. And you may be able to provide more clarity and even kind of keep me true here. If you think I’m going off on a path when it comes to a lot of this stuff, Pat, I just love to dwindle it down to making it as simple as possible.

And maybe that’s, you know, my elementary brain, but it’s like, if we keep it simple and then just have our scoreboard in front of us, it’s going to allow us to dictate what direction we want to go in and what we’re going to test. And not only that. But allow us as a team and a department to see if it’s even working or not, right?

If we’re going to be testing a bunch of different things, we’re not going to be able to see what direction we need to lean into and what direction we need to lead out of. So when capturing leads, it’s really two buckets. They are either in to quote, you know, Russell’s training and all the way back to Andre Chaperones was an autoresponder madness.

Do you know what I’m talking about?

Pat Flynn: That’s a long time ago, dude.

Ben Harris: Yeah, of going into are they in your soap opera sequence, right? Are they going through your automation and then are they in your broadcast bucket? And to really keep it too, now you can get into on a soap opera, you know, a choose your own adventure series of getting them with three emails on day one, and are they gonna get different sequences?

They click on the first email. There are some things to get into that, but really getting to a seven figure level, I have seen a lot of people not go that route. Because, you know, unless you’re using something like an active campaign or something that allows you to get granular in that way, it’s really giving them the soap opera sequence, right?

The autoresponder, that is the introduction to what you do. Now, I will, with the caveat, say that that could last a long time. I’ve seen people that have a 7 year autoresponder. Not kidding, it’s that long. And obviously I wouldn’t, I don’t know why I would advise that.

Pat Flynn: Seven years?

Ben Harris: Seriously, really, you probably know who they are.

I know for a fact you do. But then having something, let’s just say it’s a month, right? Giving 30, 60, 90 days that will take them on a journey with you. And then having your broadcast bucket that does get your newsletter, right? It does get something. If you want to maybe participate in a launch that a friend is running or any kind of product you want to introduce your audience to emailing daily, a few times a week, current events, things that have happened with your life, that relationship you have with your subscriber base is really the foundation to anything online, but it’s, it’s really the most of what I see to answer your original question are those two buckets. Now we’ll ask, do you see things different? How would you answer that question?

Pat Flynn: Well, I want to go a little bit deeper into what you mean by soap opera. Because sometimes we hear about this as a nurture sequence, right? We have the broadcast, which is like real time and what’s happening right now.

But the nurture sequences is pre written series of emails that get sent out. But what do you mean by soap opera? Because nurture can just and we always say that, and we always hear it, and it, like, isn’t really even defined, really. Nurture just means, like, staying in contact with them, but that doesn’t really help.

But what does the tone of a soap opera sequence mean?

Ben Harris: Any message or story you can tell and write that leaves them hanging, right? Just like a soap opera, where they’re like, you know, And that’s when Johnny’s wife Was never seen. It’s like, dun, dun, dun, like tune in next week. You know, it’s it’s that it was her brother.

And it’s, it’s one of those things that will, you know, leave you hanging of like, PS I’ll finish the story tomorrow. Make sure you look out for it. The subject line is going to say. My story with Pat, you know, so it’s kind of leaving them hanging and expecting more and just like any series you will watch that, you know the walking dead right breaking bad these huge huge tv shows over the last decade or so what do they do?

They leave you hanging. They leave you wanting more. And I referenced those years. I’m going back to like when they were coming on TV, not you could binge the whole thing on one night on Netflix, but what you can now, but as they aired on national TV, they followed that script, right? Storytelling is storytelling.

I don’t care if it’s your email list or Shrek, it all goes through a story. And I think that the more people would follow that one, they’re going to be building a bond with their audience because they’re sharing an element of vulnerability that more likely the reader shares with the writer, you’re also taking them on a journey that’s going to leave people hooked.

At that point, I think you’re in the process of creating superfans.

Pat Flynn: Yeah, I would agree with that. And if we can relate it obviously to the pain that a person might have, and then you kind of agitate that pain or you amplify it a little bit and then provide your solution. This is where your offer comes in, can come in. Are there any sort of top level advanced ways people are converting beyond that right now?

Ben Harris: Yeah, I would say because you mentioned at the beginning. I want to make sure I want to hit on this You mentioned sort of like higher ticket products, you know, maybe closing over the phone something like that. I would say and I don’t see this often, so again, anyone who’s listening or watching, just take this for what it’s worth because sometimes if you have multiple call to actions in an email, doesn’t really lead to anything where you want to go, right? You want to send people in a singular direction. A confused mind says no, right? We want answers, not choices.

So it sometimes leads people astray, but you could have something in a PS or another section of, and I’m talking just an email that would say if they’re interested in learning more about X result, click here, and that would enroll them somewhere else. Or that would take them to book a call that might not relate to your story completely.

Or you might have an email that would in fact take people in a different direction. Again, they get, you got to make sure they raise their hand that they’re interested in it. Cause obviously, and you know this, the higher you’re selling a product for the more indoctrination you need, just fact. So if you’re going to be selling something at higher ticket, either via webinar or via phone close for a sale, I would, on your autoresponder just have that other well open up so some subscribers can flow in that direction if they would like to both ending at the same result back into your broadcast bucket once they’ve completed the autoresponder.

Pat Flynn: That makes sense.

You mentioned webinars webinars has been pretty key for us but I know it’s also changed over time people like JLD, John Lee Dumas, had at one point been running a webinar a week to drive people into his program and has kind of slowed down. Other people are picking it back up. What’s your sense of where the world is at with the online training, like in a webinar and getting people to not just subscribe to a soap opera series or something, but you know, to a training that’s happening live at some point in time that then leads to some offer.

What’s your stance on webinars these days?

Ben Harris: I love this question. Even to JLD’s testament as well, you know, Russell did that for years, right? It was a full seven figure stream of revenue of running paid traffic to a webinar that would launch every Tuesday and it was live and would just rinse and repeat the whole thing for a year straight and did that for years.

You know, if you look at ClickFunnels user history, you know, there’s been big, big jumps, right? Most of the time for tech advances and other different lead magnets, we would launch webinars being a huge jump of that, you know, back in about, you know, 2016, 2017 around that era, but it’s changed, you know, like you can see I’ve done live webinars myself and they don’t perform like they used to. And I know like you’ve probably seen similar results as well. And I think a lot of it, and this is just based on theory. So I’m anyone in the comments or anything, welcome to argue with me if you want. Cause I don’t know if I’m factually correct, but I just consumer behaviors changed, you know, like whether it’s Gen Z forming more of a buyer population or something like that, I do feel like there just needs to be more indoctrination and more content that is not selling but it’s teaching and I’ll explain the difference is if you were able to teach something something new or something they didn’t know beforehand You were in one building rapport and creating a superfan but two you are now viewed as an authoritative figure from said person because you’ve now taught them something and you were positioned differently. So I hope everyone here listening does know what a value ladder is It’s more or less like a traffic ladder, kind of, you know, you have to bridge people from people who don’t know you to people who know you.

And in order to do that, on a basic copywriting standpoint, it is going to be somebody that you might have to lead with a problem because they don’t know you. And then go to the solution you can provide, then the product, right? And I think we need to follow that within our sales cycles as well. Not just advertising because people need to know what they buy and they need to be comfortable with their money.

I think guarantees are a huge piece too. And that might be a little growth hacky, but you know, standard money back guarantees I think are gone. I’m not a huge fan of them. I think there’s other ways that we can be more conditional in that realm. You know, you got to meet me halfway. You don’t really have 30 days, but more like a completion type things.

Or, you know, I have friends that very close friends, in fact, that don’t do a 30 day money back guarantee at all. They’re like, Hey, if you complete the whole course or all of my content, complete my book, my training program, anything, and you write me an email saying, Hey Pat, this wasn’t worth my money. No arguments, take it.

And not only are their completion rates higher, their refund rates are a heck of a lot lower. So to circle back here, webinars are just transitioning more into content based selling. Does that make sense?

Pat Flynn: Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. I mean, the webinars from back in the day were very, like they provided maybe 15% value and we’re 85%, like really good storytelling into a pitch.

And then we even had like the video sales letters and the PLF formula and that stuff. And we do still see parts of that. The storytelling is important. The building of a relationship is important. I think that’s why the PLF formula, you know, Jeff Walker’s three video series worked really well because the first two had no selling at all.

It was about story. It was about the person. It was about relatability. It was about the problem and kind of what was being done to solve that and the consequence of not solving this. And that stuff can only be done so long in a, in a, in a one hour session before, you know, either it’s too much or we get to the pitch or what have you, but we’ve seen webinars continue to work, but we’ve had to shift how those webinars are done.

We still have a registration page and people can go and watch them and it still does convert for us. It’s still our primary mechanism. However, we’re hosting those on YouTube now. Because YouTube with the live streaming platform on there allows us to get viewers who wouldn’t have found us otherwise, number one, but also we’re seeing a five to 10 X view rate after the webinar is over by the algorithm, pushing impressions out. And if we have at least a really good title and thumbnail, we’re at least going to have an opportunity to, if anything, build a relationship with people because the first 45 minutes is all value, all content. And it’s stuff that hopefully is new and different than what people are finding elsewhere on YouTube.

And, you know, YouTube is, is rewarding really good long form content right now as well, as much as it is also rewarding shorts at the moment too. So that that’s working for us. But I think, like you said the more that time goes on, the more that people need to be proven that this is a real person, that this is a real solution, and that often just can’t happen in a single day.

So for you to say like seven years of a, of a sequence, if you will, or having it take that long before a person converts is crazy, but also not it’s it’s not surprising with where we are now.

Ben Harris: On YouTube and even just kind of capping this off I think I mean, maybe I was asking selfishly you published on YouTube one You could expand your audience organically into someone who may not know like or trust you frankly and then that at worst can maybe convert into a subscriber or just someone who is viewing your content. But do you leave it up after you mentioned like after the replays?

How long do you leave up your video for or do you just leave it up?

Pat Flynn: We used to leave them up and then, you know, force the, like, get the replay by tomorrow because it’s going to go away. It’s going to go unlisted and you won’t be able to find it. But we found that there’s more benefit for just keeping it up because what we’ve done recently is the urgency that comes in, and maybe this is something we could talk about too, it’s like what goes with the offer when we offer something, how are we creating urgency to help a person make a decision?

Because for a while, for the longest time, I and many others would put a discount on a product and the discount would go away by a certain date. This is, this is classic and still people do this and do it very well. And people act because they have to or else the price will go up. Right. They have to make a decision.

So what we’ve done because we don’t want to offer a discount anymore, that in our eyes reduces the perceived value of what we’re offering. It reduces the quality of what the product may feel like. Couldn’t agree more. We want to keep that price the same because it’s now community and community is our product, but the urgency comes in with if you get in by next week, you can join the rest of the students as we all go through this course together, that the accelerator group that goes through this, the cohort begins on this date. So if you want a two and a half times more chance to succeed and transform, do it with this group that starts next week.

So, are you going to come with us or not? That’s the urgency. That’s the decision point. That’s what’s working really well. Are you seeing anything work really well? Are there bonus offers that expire or other kind of funnel hacking type things that are working for conversions these days in that regard of urgency and scarcity?

Ben Harris: That’s a good question. And we frankly probably need to do a little bit more of that. Right now what has been, you know, just been working with the constant flow of ClickFunnels customers for years has been growing our audience, right? Just growing our list and growing our trial base, which is too many KPIs that anyone in any sort of subscription business should be monitoring, but it’s really just that value ladder, right?

Bringing people and obviously no one has sold ClickFunnels until they’ve taken the steps to in order to be shown click funnels, right? Someone who is a dead cold customer would never join our subscription, right? And nor should they, they don’t know, like, or trust us. They need to be converted and to someone who has bought a book from us in the past, who has subscribed to a lead magnet.

And for us going through that, there’s not really, I guess, any bonuses or urgency that goes within that unless it is, you know, obviously a webinar or ClickFunnels annual, and we’ll include some digital products in there as well that they can’t find anywhere else. It’s only included if you buy ClickFunnels annual product on a webinar.

But I love the idea that of, you know, having the cohorts, right? That’s that’s part of that, you know, community piece that your brand is so huge on and you teach incredibly well. Do you find that that strengthens your community by having those cohorts?

Pat Flynn: Yeah, I mean, absolutely. It’s interesting because we have people come in for those accelerators and they’re like, like we used to run the cohort separately, you know, just when we were experimenting with this and they were like, okay, this is over.

We have transformed, but we want to stay in contact with each other. Like, how do we, can I get the email of everybody else who took this with me? Because we need to, we’re going to form a group together kind of thing. And we’re like, okay, well maybe we should just create the place where the groups form after, and as people are going through this, that way it’s there already.

So it’s, you know, they come for the content, they stay for the community kind of thing, which is really great. I just got really curious about ClickFunnels itself in the business. How are you getting your influx of customers these days? You mentioned a free trial. How are they getting to see that? Can you kind of go through the, your value ladder that you have as a company?

I’d be curious to see how people are coming through into the software. We have a lot of software entrepreneurs in the audience as well, who I’m sure are curious.

Ben Harris: Yeah. And it’s really about, you know, growing our audience. And that could be obviously there’s a little bit of a cheat code because there’s a guy named Russell Brunson that’s got a pretty large following and has been, you know, the face and, and the, the founder and everything behind this company.

Yeah, and with growing his audience as well as a direct proportion to our user base growing, frankly, and it’s about so if you are a founder of a software company, some metrics that you should be focusing on or growing, whether it is your company list or your own personal email list, if those two are growing and you are doing the back end at a semi effective way, your company should be growing.

And even from a software perspective, if your user base is growing year over year, so should your price. So should your price. And I think that’s one thing that a lot of people I don’t think take advantage of just from a basic profitability standpoint. And that’s not anything of trying to make more money.

That’s just something I’ve learned from consulting groups over my years of, you know, my lap around the sun. But I think that if you are growing a software company and really what we’ve done, it’s been growing our audience through low front end products. I know that sounds boring and mundane. But it’s been done effectively and done with discipline and it was either Dan Kennedy or Russell has always said book buyers the best buyers and maybe you could attest or disagree with that, Pat, but it has been Dot Com Secrets, Expert Secrets, Traffic Secrets, the box set of turning a lot of lower ticket buyers into lifelong customers and it’s really indoctrinating them with the teachings and the philosophy because with ClickFunnels, it was like ClickFunnels is the car, right? And Russell’s calling was to teach you how to drive. And then once you got in, you knew exactly what to do. So with us growing, that’s one piece. The second half of the fence is really a spot where I live a lot in our company, and that’s our affiliate revenue.

You know, we’ve done a phenomenal job at growing an affiliate army, if you will. And anyone here would like a good read. Integration Marketing by Mark Joyner is a fantastic read, like 80 pages. You can read it in one night. But really going about our customers, right? You know exactly who your avatar is. If I asked you right now, Pat, you could paint a picture for me if you wanted to.

But finding out we’re else your avatar lives, right? What other products are they buying? And within those products, those courses, those teaching, is there any blank real estate where ClickFunnels could live as well, right? Could we help each other and do some stuff and maybe provide their audience and offer that won’t exist anywhere else.

A true one time offer. And that’s been huge for us as well. You know, at times has equated to quite a bit of our annual revenue have been the partnerships and the affiliate. Just integrations that we have with other people that are out there selling to our audience as well.

Pat Flynn: Nice. How do you determine the right compensation model for a company like ClickFunnels?

Like, is it a percentage for life or, you know, how do you calculate that? I know that there’s a lot of other softwares out there who often struggle to find, you know, a groove with their partner or an affiliate program. How have you been able to solve that? What does that look like?

Ben Harris: I’m pretty polar on this and I say that because I want to give, A, our customer, the best experience, right? If we’re not doing that, why are we even here? And secondly, I want to give our affiliate the highest compensation that we could give them with keeping our lights on as well. Because in my mind, they’re bringing me a customer that I didn’t even know. And a lot of it from even just starting out, I would advise doing this if you’re running paid traffic or any type of paid media, how much does it cost you to make a sale?

Just put a number in your head. How much is it costing you? And then if you’re in a subscription based business, what is your average stick rate? What’s your customer lifetime value and kind of find a medium in between there. So if it’s going to cost you 300 to make a sale and your lifetime value of a customer is around a $1000, what would you rather do right give somebody a little bit more and you take a slight haircut if they’re gonna bring you a raving fan that’s a raving fan of them coming into your world that you know. And obviously, you know, it’s really about knowing your numbers because they could bring you a lifetime value that’s higher or lower So you really got a kind of look at that per affiliate.

But in terms of just starting out look at how much you’re paying to gain a customer and start there.

Pat Flynn: That makes sense and I know from Being an affiliate for different companies and also having an affiliate program for my own products, oftentimes the large number of sales come in from a fewer number of people, very much like super partners.

If you will, you know, Pareto’s rule comes into play. How do you build a relationship with a partner like that? How do you go out and start a rapport for somebody who you feel would be a great fit to promote a software like yours and nurture that relationship and get, get it to a point where you’re both helping each other win.

Ben Harris: So there’s a, a quantitative or qualitative answer to that. I’ll go quantitative first. It’s really about strategically kind of coming into their world. So whoever that is, right, you’ve identified, we call it the dream 100 from Chet Holmes of who are my top 100 dream promoters of my product. And really kind of involving your life into theirs.

Like, where are they on social media? You should be commenting on their posts and not stuff, like make sure it’s at great post Pat, you know, with the hands up emoji, like, you know, no one would really care about that, but really finding out what’s important to them, subscribing to their list, emailing back, making sure that you are showing love, you know, meeting who else is on their team, right?

If they have an EA, you’re going to want to get in good with them as well, right? They’re the eyes and the ears of anybody who you’re looking to be in front of. And again, kind of commenting on their post, finding out what’s What are the contacts you can get in touch with? Maybe looking at, are you one introduction away?

Do I have a close friend who might know you that’s like, Hey, could you start a text thread with Pat Flynn or even ask if he’d be interested in meeting who I am? So taking that strategic approach and sort of knowing how to broach it, it’s courtship and it’s most simplest form. That’s what it is. I’m not going to try and walk up to a girl and ask her to marry me.

She’d probably hit me in the head and rightfully so. And on a qualitative front on that. It’s just finding out what’s important to them and being their friend. And if people do business with people they like, and especially in this industry, and you’ve been around to the point where if it’s built to last, it will, right?

People who are out for their own gain, you can sniff it from a mile away. And if you’re not in this business to, to help everybody and the rising tide lifts all ships, then I hate to break it to you. I don’t know if you need to hear it from me, but you’re not going to make it that far. And it’s most basic.

Human element form. It’s how can I help whatever they’re trying to accomplish? And if you do that, expecting nothing in return, I promise it’ll work out for you. If you just zoom out for a bit. So again, double sided one strategy, one is just, you know, let’s, let’s figure out how to just be a good person.

That’s, I would suggest that.

Pat Flynn: I would plus one that as well. And if you’re a long time listener of SPI, you know that that’s, that’s how we do things around here. So I appreciate that. Ben to finish off here, I want to ask you about, you know, we’ve talked a little bit about where things were and what things are working right now.

Where is the puck going? What is ClickFunnels doing right now? What are you thinking in terms of the future and where we’re at? In maybe a year or two, how are we going to continue to remain on top of it when it comes to marketing our products and sales? What’s going to change?

Ben Harris: You got to think about the ClickFunnels customer and what they’re looking to accomplish and whether there’s 100 steps, 10 steps, however you want to define it.

In my mind, how can I remove every one of those barriers, right? How can I make the path to a two comma club award as easy as possible? Not easy, but it’s removing areas of friction and they exist. And it’s really about helping people. You know, you see other people in this industry, right? They’ve got different things you can download that make building funnels easier.

They make accessing products easier, maybe on the drop shipping front, you know, integrations, different things like that. And I’m saying just drop shipping. That was just something that came to my mind, but in terms of where the puck is headed, that’s what we’re trying to do is making it, you know, AI plays a big piece in that.

On the creation standpoint, making it as easy as possible. I hate the word easy because I feel like it’s a, it’s a shortcut type answer. And that’s our team is actually our hashtag, this year is no shortcuts. No, John Gordon has like one word for the year. I have one hashtag. I really don’t know why I just came up with it, but that’s sort of our deal.

But it’s something about how can we eliminate as much friction as possible? Because what we used to do is just give them the tool. Gave you the tool, taught you how to drive. Now there’s, there’s a little bit more handholding. That’s probably a bad answer. Do you want me to go deeper on that?

Pat Flynn: Go deeper if you can.

Ben Harris: I guess, you know, AI. AI is changing the game. And we are going to be implementing quite a bit of that in terms of helping you create content, source products, ideas, and so on. Get the actual product themselves, you know, create email sequences. You know what does you’re going to have the ability to just do much more than a share funnel.

And it, for any ClickFunnels fan out there, you knew that if I had an opt in page or a template I wanted to share with you, I could just give you a link, it’d be in your account a couple of different seconds. You’ll now be able to do that. As if we’re on steroids and I’ll leave the open loop there, but you can do much more than a share funnel now and a lot of help with creating content.

It eliminates the guesswork, right? AI is sort of like your internet assistant that has been studying for decades, you know, that already has a bunch of information. So learning how to use that, you’re going to eliminate a lot of guesswork and a lot of issues for yourself.

Pat Flynn: Nice man. Well, we got a lot of stuff to look forward to and I’ve, I’ve heard so many great things about ClickFunnels from a lot of our own users and a lot of my friends too. So if anybody wants to check out ClickFunnels and see what it might do for them in terms of helping them with sales and building funnels for themselves, where should they go?

Ben Harris: ClickFunnels.com. You got it, man. Definitely a lot of cool stuff coming down the pipeline. Follow us on social media at @ClickFunnels and we’ll be coming out with a lot of fun content that I hope you enjoy.

Pat Flynn: Nice, man. Thanks so much, man. Appreciate it. Thank you, Pat.

All right. I hope you enjoyed that episode with Ben. Again, you can check out the company and the software at ClickFunnels.Com if you’d like, but great episode. You know, we talked about a number of different things that you could do. What I would recommend from here and with all episodes of the podcast is you get that one nugget, that one idea that you know that you can try and implement and you give it a chance, you execute, you commit to it, you see it through, you follow through, and then you can assess from there.

And I guarantee if you take even one of these ideas from today’s episode, maybe it’s a more beginner one, or maybe a more advanced one, you’re going to see something happen. You’re going to see some results and be able to adjust from there. So thank you again, Ben. Thank you to ClickFunnels and Russell.

Russell and I have crossed paths every once in a while. We weren’t able to get him on the show, but he’s super busy, but Ben is great. So thank you, Ben. And thank you for listening all the way through. I appreciate you. And I look forward to serving you in next week’s episode and next week’s interview.

Cheers. Thanks so much. See you in the next one.

Thank you so much for listening to the Smart Passive Income podcast at SmartPassiveIncome.com. I’m your host, Pat Flynn. Sound editing by Duncan Brown. Our senior producer is David Grabowski, and our executive producer is Matt Gartland. The Smart Passive Income Podcast is a production of SPI Media, and a proud member of the Entrepreneur Podcast Network. Catch you next week!