Strategy Calls that Sell Premium Programs with John Meese

Strategy Calls that Sell Premium Programs with John Meese
===

John Meese: [00:00:00] one of my biggest frustrations with market research is that most market research ends with someone saying like, would you buy this thing? And someone's saying, yes. And they're like, good, great. But. There's no actual purchase happening.

It's a sort of imaginary purchase. And so in my case, and I wanted this to be something where it's like, okay, it's high impact coaching. It is market research. And the most important part of market research is, will you buy this right now? Yes or no. And so the serve call does all of those things.

Allan: In today's episode, we're welcoming John Meese. And John is the author of three books. Today in particular, we're going to talk about his latest book, which just recently came out called Serve to Sell. John helps people monetize their knowledge and helps them get that out there in a way that's sustainable.

So, welcome, John. uh, What do you do and who do you do it for?

John Meese: Yeah. And I mean, that's excellent. my goal is really to help entrepreneurs. Sell their smarts without selling their soul. And so that's a core part of what I do about you know, smart marketing that one could even say lean marketing. Um, and, I mean, [00:01:00] I'm sure you know this, Allan.

There's lots of people in the marketing world that teach pretty kind of sleazy, gimmicky ways to sell that really gives marketing a bad rap. And so a lot of what I do is focus on, okay, how do you. You know, build a business where, yes, you are selling, but you're also serving alone at the same way that's a core part of what you do.

Allan: Love it. so kicking off what's your background? How did you get to where you are right now? So I know I want to really dig into your book Serve to Sell. Great title.

I think it's something that a lot of people would get a lot of benefit out of, but maybe let's start with your background a little bit and then we'll get into the book.

John Meese: Yeah, happy to. I mean, I originally, my background is in like traditional economics. I was. I studied economics in college. I worked for an economics research lab. And I was on this, you know, PhD professor track, but I was really frustrated honestly with the whole economics world because so much of what we did was just so academic and disconnected from just like everyday life.

And so that's where I kind of ended up kind of stumbling into entrepreneurship, which is really Practical economics, right? [00:02:00] It's just like the day to day of supply and demand. so I got into that about a decade ago. So I started building an online education business on my own, just as a blog and email list, you know, and then a course and then a membership and then a coaching program. And then I started helping other people do the same thing.

And then in 2017, I started working with a guy named Michael Hyatt who, and I took over running a membership site of his called Platform University, where overnight I went from running, online course launches of like 10, to half million dollar courses and membership launches. And we had thousands of professionals in our membership who were all, Trying to learn how to do this whole internet marketing thing.

And so I got to interview, while I was the dean of platform for C, I also got to interview. And we're close to the people like Ray Edwards and Pat Flynn and you know, Mike Michalowicz and, Donald Miller. And a lot of these people who have become really legends in kind of modern in a marketing space. So helped Michael Hyatt sell that business in 2020 to Pete Vargas And then I used that expertise to kind of start and sell a couple of my own businesses, a software company, the [00:03:00] coworking space industry. But really I came back that whole time. I was just documenting when I was learning and really, Kind of focused on what I'm doing now as my core love in the midst of all that is writing.

I mean, it's really building these businesses either with clients or my own businesses, and then coming back and writing about what I learned to share these, processes, the things that I learned, these universal truths that other people can apply them to their own business. So that's what I do now.

Allan: your biggest learnings in, I mean, you worked with some of these big names to really monetize their knowledge and help them get their message out there.

Simplifying Business Models for More Success
---

Allan: What were some of your biggest learnings there?

John Meese: Oh man. I think the part of it is that The biggest learning that sticks out to me, and I'm not saying that just because I'm on your podcast, but this is obviously going to endorse a lot of what you do the biggest thing that sticks out to me is the fact that the Achilles heel of all of those businesses as they were scaling was always complexity.

I mean, it was just walking into a meeting and going like, okay, our problem is We have 32 products, and our customers don't know what the heck they're supposed to buy. And, this is true when we're [00:04:00] talking about, you know, online education businesses that we're scaling from 1 million dollars a year, to 2 million dollars a year, to 5, to 20. That was always the problem. And sometimes we didn't recognize it. Like sometimes it looked like a marketing or a sales problem of like, we just got to like get a bigger audience and inevitably we'd come back and just like simplify. over And over again, I mean, I will say like just over and over again, the model that I saw just work in every niche that we worked in was ultimately having a, where you have a seven figure school where you're earning at least a million dollars a year revenue.

from three core products, a gateway product, a membership product, and then a premium program. And so ultimately, even the businesses that ended up having a lot more products than that, when you looked under the hood of like, where do these results come from? It was usually those three core products working together.

Allan: I love that. I want to really underline that every time I've simplified the business, reduced the products, reduced the complexity, reduced the things I've made more money, and come to the stage where, simple plan uh, it feels just too simple. but it just makes the most difference of [00:05:00] anything.

So I've applied that to my own business. I've applied that to clients that we work with. I'd love to hear a little bit more about Gateway product membership

sure.

premium program.

Are there ticket sizes that you sort of assigned to those? where do they sit and how does it work with cross sells, upsells and so on?

John Meese: totally. Yes, I'm happy to share this. I do think it comes with a disclaimer that a lot of people try to jump straight into building all three of these at once. And I think that's a mistake. If you're building an online education business from scratch or from where you've got some one on one services or something like that, and now you're trying to build an online education business, I do recommend you build a premium program first.

Now that's the exact opposite of what most people do. Most people go, I'm going to build my business off the back of a 17 ebook and then they spend a year trying to sell it. They sell a hundred or a thousand and they walk away and they go, wow, that was exhausting. And I made like 3000 bucks and then they give up.

I mean, that's honestly the death by a thousand ebooks is the most common reason why online education businesses fail. So. The premium [00:06:00] program, I think, you know, just really just starts by committing to saying, I'm going to have a way that's for people to invest in total transformation. Often it looks like a high ticket group coaching program or a mastermind, but the important thing here is that you're making a really bold.

bold premium 10x promise attached to that program. And what's really cool is when you have a program like this, it actually affects even though maybe less than 10 percent of your customers will buy it, it actually affects every single person who follows you. So to give a real life example here, Mike Pacquiao is a client of mine.

He had a program that was called speech club. They're selling pretty well, but he's written speeches for, and been a speaking coach for like You know, James Clear, Amy Porterfield, Donald Miller, I a lot of the same people I mentioned earlier, you know, people who have really dominated their industry.

So we came back, we worked together to create a promise for his premium program. It's a group coaching program. It's 5, 000 per person. He takes a max of 10 people at a time for that program. And the promise of it is create an unforgettable signature talk that will earn you instant trust with any audience.

In [00:07:00] other words. Like, he's not just selling, become a better speaker, he's selling you will walk into this as one person, you will walk out with an unforgettable signature talk that will earn you instant trust with any audience. And what happens is even when somebody hears about that and doesn't join his premium program, now all of a sudden they pay more attention to his free newsletter, they pay more attention to his podcast, to any other products he releases because they understand the bigger picture of what the ultimate goal is.

Allan: Is 5000 the premium program or is that the group program?

John Meese: That's the group program. I say premium program as a product category and then a group coaching program is a type of premium program that you can have. Some people have a mastermind, some people have a group coaching program. Some people have an in-person event.

I have one client who had a cruise like there's a lot of different types of premium programs, but just making it clear that you have one in your business I think is

critical.

Allan: you recommend that the premium program be like just a one off cost to enroll in the program? Or is there a recurring component or what are your

John Meese: Yeah. Yeah. I've definitely seen it be more effective when it's a one time fee where there's a clear like [00:08:00] objective that you're working towards. I mean, I say like I've done this in my own business and with clients where we were selling a 5, 000 a year mastermind and then we changed it to selling a 5, 000 90 day program and it was easier to sell because it's actually, if you think about it, you're like, well, it's three months instead of 12 months.

Yeah. But it was more focused on here's what we're going to accomplish in the next 90 days. And it's not a forever transaction. And so it was actually easier to sell a shorter term. And then on the back end, usually that's where membership, the membership product comes in, right? Cause then you've got the membership product for continuity where, you know, that might be a high ticket mastermind where you're paying a thousand or 2000 or more a month or it might be something that's more of like a lower ticket membership that's typically if it's like before your premium program, if it's like, You're paying 100 a month or 50 a month or whatever that might be.

Allan: I've often recommended similar things to clients and one of the objections is, Hey, I want recurring revenue. But what I often say is, look, sometimes it's about just bringing forward the lifetime value. You may collect that lifetime value over two or three years, or you can bring 90 days.

[00:09:00] So, in which case, that's a lot more valuable. So. I always think in terms of lifetime value, not necessarily is this recurring revenue or is this over a year or two years or whatever. So what's the lifetime value that we can extract from this customer obviously in a way that serves them and should we front load that?

Should we have that over a period of time or whatever else? And. And very similar to what you recommend. I also recommend starting with the premium program for a few reasons. So first of all you don't need many of those to do very well, right? So you can start doing pretty well early on.

You don't need huge volume. You don't need to run tons of ads. You don't have to do tons of Outreach, but importantly in a premium program, you'll start to get feedback from clients. people who going to see where people get stuck. You're going to see what questions you get. You're going to see what roadblocks people hit.

And so that's something that you now know other people in your low end programs will get. But if you start at the [00:10:00] low end, you're going to encounter all of these difficulties and conversion problems and things like that. And you're not going to know why.

John Meese: Yes. I mean, just to drive home what you just said I think the gateway product is one that a lot of people I think just misunderstand. And so what I teach my clients typically is that the goal of a gateway product is not to create cash, it's to create customers.

And so people will try to do this math where they're like, I'm going to sell, I'm going to do trip wires and I'm going to do upsells. And it's like, well, your goal with the gateway product is to create a customer and to earn their trust in the process so that. You can now sell your membership product or your premium program.

like my book, for example, like the whole book we're talking about, Served to Sell, it comes out of my premium program. I had a coaching program where I defined a process over a couple of years and taught it to clients and once we'd repeat it and refined it, it was very simple for me to then write it out and create a book.

The book itself is a gateway product. It's designed to create customers, not to create cash. So I think a lot of people get that confused, but that's really important to understand the purpose of a gateway product.

Allan: Yeah. I've done the exact same thing with both my books. [00:11:00] They were both programs and then they got fed back into the books. So the one page marketing plan was a process long before it was a book. The lean marketing is essentially our one on one coaching program. But backfilled into a book and it creates that virtuous cycle because if I was just to write the book just from some theory or whatever, it's not going to be as effective and impactful as, Hey, this is actually something that we've perfected over years and years of working with clients.

And now you can use it. And so that's one of the reasons why the book has resonated with so many people, because. It's based on real stuff. It's not academic research. That's great. Well, that's a great segue into your book. So, tell us some of the what's the key idea behind the book?

And then let's maybe dive into some of the process behind it.

John Meese: Sure. So the book's called serve to sell exactly how to sell premium programs with one free coaching call. And that's kind of the whole promise right there. It's right there in the subtitle, which is that exactly how to sell premium programs with one free coaching call. Look, it's, I didn't invent [00:12:00] the idea of a strategy session or a discovery call or a free coaching call.

This is something that's kind of become standard in the consulting or coaching or even agencies, you know, across these industries, it's become pretty standard to have this intake call, but. There's kind of like what you do in that call is kind of all over the place. And so I got really frustrated early on in my journey of finding out like, wait a second, I'm calling this a strategy session.

I'm jumping on this call, but I know it's a sales call, right? Like I want you to buy my thing. And. What do you call a sales call where you don't make a sale?

Allan: bad sales call.

John Meese: it's like, it's just like a waste of time, a bad sales call, a failure. I don't know. It's just like, I felt like by it's, I feel like words matter. And just by putting that name, even it was in my head, even if I called it a strategy session, but I knew it was a sales call that I felt like under the hood, what I was doing, I was putting a lot of pressure on this instance.

It was really it was just pass fail, right? It's like either you make a sale or you don't. So. Over a period of time, I kind of reverse engineered this process that I call a serve call, which is essentially it's three things. [00:13:00] It is a high impact coaching conversation. So even if somebody doesn't buy anything else from you, as soon as they get on that call, once it's over, they walk away and they go, wow, that was potentially life changing.

It was definitely significant. And I've had people who've reached out a full year. after one of these free coaching calls and said, I'm still thinking about what you said on that call a year ago. I'm ready to sign up. It's also market research, right?

We want to make sure that every single time we're having a serve call, we're actually getting detailed insight from the person we're talking to, of what specifically, what their goals are and what's standing in their way getting it in a way that we're actually not, seeding them with our terminology, right?

Like you, Allan, you don't want someone on a call just to tell you like, well, what I need is lean marketing. You're like, well, no, I want, them to say in their words, how do they describe the problem, right? That's something we pay copywriters a whole bunch of money for. you can get your clients to do that for you.

And the third thing is it also sells a premium program. Because one of my most, one of my biggest frustrations with market research is that most market research ends with someone saying like, would you buy this thing? And someone's saying, yes. And they're like, good, great. But. There's [00:14:00] no actual purchase happening.

It's a sort of imaginary purchase. And so in my case, and I wanted this to be something where it's like, okay, it's high impact coaching. It is market research. And the most important part of market research is, will you buy this right now? Yes or no. And so the serve call does all of those things. And it's something that I was using it on my own, but I started teaching it to clients a couple of years ago.

And I mean, one of my clients, Justin Reikman, he had no audience whatsoever. I mean, he was a part time traffic engineer, a couple of side hustles. He'd been a couple of podcasts as a guest, just talking about his side business selling meat sticks. But he wanted to start this his new coaching company.

And so he started doing serve calls. And over the last two years, he's built a seven figure business. He now has 650 email subscribers, but he built a seven figure business off of that because he's, because serve calls are a core part of his strategy. I've got other clients who've launched, you know, six figure or seven figure programs, but his is, I think, the most extreme example that it's like, if you just sometimes doing things, what doesn't scale is the best solution.

So now his business is called seven figure [00:15:00] leap to kind of celebrate like that, what he's done and help other people do stuff, do the same.

Allan: who's doing those serve calls? Is it a sales person? Is it a coach? Is it like a closer, a setter or like, who's doing that?

John Meese: The most, success that I've seen with this has been when it's, when it is the actual coach who's giving it, which I think is another thing that sets it apart from like a lot of sales techniques is that like, yes, you could, and I've taught this to sales teams, like you could teach this to anybody on a sales team to do it, but it's designed for someone who's not in a sales position.

It's designed to be a coaching call that leads to a sale. And so I've had plenty of people who've told me that like, as entrepreneurs, as coaches, like, yeah. They've always kind of got nauseous at the idea of selling, but then I teach them to do a serve call and they start doing it. All of a sudden they're like, I just made 10, 000.

Like what just happened? And so I think that's kind of the magic of the serve call approach is that because it is focused on serving then the people who are most committed to coaching and serving are the best at it. So I've had professional sales teams also use this and it works fine, but I [00:16:00] think where it's really special is for people that don't have a lot of sales experience and they're primarily.

They just want to serve. They just want to help.

Allan: And so how are we avoiding some of these waste of time sort of calls? there's a segment of people that will just jump on anything that's free and they have absolutely no intention in buying.

Is there any qualifying criteria? How are you filtering people out who you, you maybe don't want to have a call with or who you do have a call with? How are you finding ones that have more intention to buy or are you not, you're just serving everybody?

John Meese: Well, that's a great question. I think the answer to that is very much depends on the entrepreneur and where their business is at, because like at the scale you're at, you and your team should not be jumping on serve calls with just anybody. Right. But it depends. It just really just depends on where somebody is on their journey.

Lots of people that I've worked with, plenty of clients, where they have smaller audiences or it's a new premium program and they haven't done that before. Maybe they've sold low price products like courses or a low price membership, but they haven't really done like something high ticket. Usually my recommendation is step one is to be pretty broad [00:17:00] in terms of who you accept under a serve call, but then to start adding filters based on what you see.

Like, you know, like based on as you're having serve calls, you realize, okay, there's a whole category of people here that are not a good fit. Okay, now we're going to add a filter in. Maybe that's a question on the booking form. Maybe we introduce an application. I think some people rush straight to create systems that, that, that are scalable, that have a lot of the complexity of like all the filters in place.

And that that's a mistake. I mean, Sean Blanc, one of my clients who, I mean, he has 50, 000 email subscribers and he worked with, you know, high ticket consultants to build this whole like high ticket sales process in his whole business to sell a high ticket program. An application funnel to a, you know, a sales page and like the VSL, the whole thing.

And nine months went by and he'd sold one and he's really frustrated by that. So we started working together and we deleted all of that. I said, just delete it all. Just delete it. We sent one email to his list that said and said, would you be interested in working with me to run your full time business working part time hours?

Dash Sean. That's the [00:18:00] whole email. There's no click here, right? It's a, you know, a hand raiser is the category of, you know, that I would call that. And based on people's replies, and people like, like, basically, if you weren't interested, like, if you didn't have a full time business, you didn't reply, or you said, no, that's not for me.

But if that was your pain point, which is the pain point he's addressing, then they replied, they said yes, he invited them on a call, and then he built a six figure program in less than six months. And now he's had three sold out cohorts in a row of that program in less than a year. and that's from just taking out all the complexity.

Allan: So that's to his existing list which I totally understand and agree with. And how is he adding to his list? How is he replenishing? So if he's removed all his VSLs, all his ads and things like that, how are you getting new subscribers in and getting new people into the funnel?

John Meese: Well, gateway products. I mean, that's a whole other strategy, right? Here we're talking about selling the premium program. But I mean, I don't generally advise going straight. Okay, so if you're building a new business, yes, the premium program should be your first product. But if you have a mature business where you have multiple products, I [00:19:00] wouldn't typically recommend going straight for the premium program sale.

And so typically it's selling a gateway product that's related. And then using that as the first trigger to say, Hey, this person might be interested and let's have an automation where we're going to send a very personal email to them. It's just like, Hey, I saw you sign up for this. Love to know, tell me more about your goals.

What are you working towards? And really just start that conversation to see over email. Are they maybe a good fit? And at this point, like, two VAs on my team who handle most of that in the inbox before I ever even see the email. So I'm seeing an email. They've already answered a couple of questions.

That makes it clear, like, okay, they're probably good fit. And then now I'm going to say, yeah, I think they are. Let's get them on a call. And at this point I have another coach on my team who does most of the serve calls. So again, like at this point, I'm, I still do some for me, I want to be on the front lines, right?

So I still got a little bit of time on Tuesday afternoon and people who don't know that if they're booking a serve call, it just says you're booking with the serve smarts team. Although if you know this, if you're here, this, and you see a Tuesday afternoon slot, it's probably me. So I take a couple of those because I think it's important for me to just be on the front lines and get to know who we're talking to.

Allan: of course. And what are some examples of gateway products? So you [00:20:00] mentioned a book, which totally agree with. So what if you don't have a book or you're not willing to write a book? What else could be a gateway product?

John Meese: Yeah. remember that a gateway product, the goal is to create customers, not create cash. And so part of that is because you know that, when someone buys a product from you, they're five times more likely to buy another product than someone who's never bought anything.

And so like, that's our goal is to build our customer list. Well, With that, one of the reasons why a book is so incredible is because it's a huge high value for low investment. And so the ROI is insane for someone who is going to buy a book and read it. However, the input to create a really good book is also a lot.

And so it's a lot of work. So I don't usually recommend people start with a book if they haven't already, they don't already have that experience in their belt. What I typically recommend most people start with for their first gateway product is some sort of paid workshop. It doesn't have to be complicated.

I mean, it's literally just pick one thing you can teach, And offer a paid workshop. And again, the goal here is to create customers, not cash. So what you charge for that might not be very much. It might be 17 or 20 or 50 or a hundred dollars to [00:21:00] come to this paid workshop. And then you can record that. And now all of a sudden you have a course.

Now, again, this is a very simple course. This is essentially like a 60 minute training plus 30 minutes of Q and A is typically what it looks like. But one of my clients did this Michelle Gifford, she has a whole complicated program and she has lots of different offers. And I encouraged her to create a gateway product.

It was just super simple. And she helps people build their business Instagram account. And so she, you know, I just asked her like, what's the one thing everybody wants? And she was like, well, more followers. Like that's not really what they need, but that's what they want. Okay, so let's create a gateway product around that.

And so she created a product that was called your next 1000 followers and she rolled it out. It was 97 to come to a live workshop and she immediately turned into a recorded program for her. It was effortless because this is stuff she teaches and does practices all the time. But it, I don't remember the numbers at the top of my head.

I've written about this in my newsletter before, but I mean, it unlocked a lot of people in her audience who were just like, yes, who bought that. But immediately. A lot of them upgraded to her membership product, and some of them [00:22:00] upgraded to her group coaching program, like, within the first week after they bought that product, because they were just buying into that first promise.

So that's another example. That's a really easy gateway product to start with as a paid workshop.

Allan: Okay. And what are your thoughts around the gateway product being free versus paid?

John Meese: I think it's really important that there is a paid product for it to be a gateway product. With one exception. I'll explain that in a second. So, if you're giving away something free, I mean, free content, I mean, that's the whole point of my book, Always Be Teaching, is actually really about that whole, the business model of free content.

it's like our world expects it right now that's, that, that is considered a very much a norm, but there's a psychological shift that happens when someone invests at least a dollar with you. And then as soon as they invest any money with you and you deliver or even better over deliver on what you promised, that's what gets you the math where they're five times more likely to purchase another product from you.

Than someone who's never bought from you before. A free intro is an excellent strategy to build your email list, but your customer list is actually more important. [00:23:00] So I do think you need to charge for it, with one exception, and Allan, I mention the exception because I'm also planning to break this rule today on this interview although you don't know this a book is the oldest education product in the world, right?

It's the most established value, like books have been around for thousands of years, and so there is real established perceived value in a book. And so because of that, I think it's the one product that you can say, Hey, right now you can go to Amazon, buy my book for 10, or you can go to serve to sell book.

com slash lean and get a free ebook. I think it's the one exception because there's, there is a perceived value of this is a real product that is for sale. And so giving it away for free, I think still has the same effect. That's a theory though. I mean, I don't have the data to back that up, but I think it's true.

Allan: Well, in my experience, I mean, we have tried free book funnels and I mean, the book is almost free. I think we sell it on Kindle for like 2. 99. I would consider that essentially free, but books, I call the [00:24:00] kind of the nuclear weapon of business cards. Like they're so, so

powerful. I've been.

John Meese: Yeah.

Allan: We've all been conditioned since children to respect books and by extension authors. I think it's a super, super powerful marketing asset. I talk about that in my book, Lean Marketing as well. So I totally agree. Where do things like, Your content strategy, like podcasts, like YouTube videos, like blog post articles, all of that fall in, are you counting that as gateway products or they're more just lead magnets?

What are your thoughts? Are there?

John Meese: I mean, I think of an online education business, you know, under the hood, the client creation machine has three different systems that are working together when it's done well. Attract, nurture, and sell. So a lot of things you just mentioned as far as free content, they mostly fit in attract and nurture.

Now, a lot of times people use the phrase sales and marketing. They throw that out there. They're like, I'm doing sales and marketing. And sometimes they're like scrolling on Facebook and commenting on things. And they're like, this is sales and marketing. And so I just challenged that and [00:25:00] kind of, I always ask my clients like, okay, what are you doing that is attract, that is attracting your target clients?

And what are you doing that is nurturing the relationship with the target clients you already have? And then what are you doing to sell your products and services? And so I usually break them into those three phases. So a podcast, for example, is a phenomenal nurture tool, but it's pretty lousy attract tool by itself.

Okay. Right. Just like being in the podcast directories, for example, now you can take some of that nurture content that we create today in this conversation and you can create a video clip off of that and share that on an attract platform that you're using to get in front of new people. But a podcast is a phenomenal nurture tool.

And so I think it's really important to just like ask where, like what your objective is, which was what you're doing in your business. I would say that the whole product portfolio of like gateway product, membership product, premium program, I really put all of those in that cell machine of kind of like that's that part of the machine in terms of how do you now that you've attracted your target client and you've built trust with them through like a free newsletter or a podcast or a combination.

or something like that, then how do you then sell them into your gateway product and how does that gateway product lead to your membership product, or to your premium [00:26:00] program, etc. And I do think it's really critical to have like One primary premium program, and one primary membership product. But I do think when it comes to gateway products, you can definitely have a lot of those. Because again, like the goal here is like to find like a very specific pain point, that you can test and see, are people going to put money down to solve this problem?

And even though your books, like the one page marketing plan, for example, even if it's just 2 on Amazon, that's 2. I mean, that's real money. And that's enough, I think, for someone to really move into that point of like, okay, I'm a customer. I'm invested in learning from you. And as I'm thinking about it, I'm like, I've never bought any of your courses or programs.

Maybe that's my mistake, but I have bought your books. And so I do like respect you, Allan, as not just like an author that I know, but someone like I've read your books. I've spent a lot of time with you. One sided, like going through all of your books and resources. And I think that's something pretty special about like every product to make possible at scale.

Allan: Yeah, I totally agree. And a key part of lean marketing is creating a lot of value for people who even will never be clients, and that's totally fine. One of the things that is a [00:27:00] real mission for me is to help clean up what's happening in marketing where we're constantly getting essentially pollution, like interruption, spam, cold emails, cold calls, things that just interrupt and don't add a lot of value.

I want. my marketing to positively impact whoever it touches, even if they never become clients and the vast majority never will, which is totally fine. But we have enough that see enough value in buying paid programs that that sustains the business. And we do very well out of that.

The Structure of a Strategy Call that Sells: Serve Call
---

Allan: So, so let's transition a little bit into what does a serve call look like?

Like, what's the structure? I'm on board with the idea. What does a serve call look like?

John Meese: totally. there's six parts to this and I'm happy to just like walk through those and share those here. That's also something that's really easy. If someone wants to follow, if anybody wants to follow along with like examples of this, of like, detailed examples of specific things that people have shared on serve calls and all the different variations of things you can ask.

During each of the six steps, I've never done this before, but for you, [00:28:00] Allan, I thought I'd try it, where that, I mean, the ebook is free, you can just, you can buy it on Amazon if you want, or you can go to serve2sellbook. com slash lean and get a copy. But the structure that, in summary, is relationship, results, roadblocks, resources, recap, and recommendation.

Don't worry, I'll actually explain what those means.

Allan: Okay, great.

John Meese: But again, some of this may seem obvious, but it's really easy to skip over. In the moment, step one is just establish a relationship. And the suggested question I have here is what's on your mind, which is a great conversation starter.

But the questions that I give in the book are more just examples for that. I encourage people to personalize for how you would say this conversationally. You want a circle to feel like a natural conversation, not like you're, you know, across a conference room table in a business meeting, but more like you're talking to someone over coffee or over lunch where you're getting to know them.

And so the first part of setting the tone is really to establish a relationship. Now, might happen in two minutes or less of just finding some sort of shared common ground. Like, what's one thing they have in common? Do you both care about your kids? Are you both from the same hometown? Do you [00:29:00] like the same sports team?

Whatever that is. But I find that people, sometimes they think they're being helpful by skipping that and saying like, I want to make sure I'm super valuable. And so it just goes straight into coaching. But it actually I think it's really important that at the beginning of a serve call, You help people emotionally connect so they relax because otherwise when the people typically come into a call, whatever you call it, whether you call it a free coaching call or strategy session, discovery call, whatever.

Most people come into that with their defenses up because they think they're in shopping mode and most people in shopping mode are pretty defensive, right? They've already got their walls up because they're sure you're gonna pitch them on something. And so your first job is really just to get them out of shopping mode into just connection mode.

And then to, you know, connecting and dreaming, and it's a totally different emotional state. So that's step one, is establish a relationship. And then, immediately after that, is to get clear on the results they want, the roadblocks in the way, and the resources they currently have. Now those three are typically intertwined.

I mean, I do actually like teach [00:30:00] them kind of sequentially, but Usually what happens with results, for example, is you'll say, so tell me about what you're working on. What is your most important goal right now? And Allan, maybe we can do this with me if you wouldn't mind. What is your most important goal right now, Allan?

Allan: my most important goal right now is to have lean marketing be as successful or more successful than the one page marketing plan. So that's something that I'm really focused on at the moment, selling a lot of copies of the lean marketing.

John Meese: I believe marketing. Amazing. How's that going so far?

Allan: It's going really well. It's been selling very strong.

Yes.

John Meese: That's awesome. So we don't need to go too deep into that, but just to use as an example, it's like, that's part of the goal here is that it's really just asking like, what's the most important goal right now? You know, what are you working on? What's important to you to get clear and results? And this is something where I have a whole framework for like how to take notes in this, but.

The point is you're really just capturing the essence of what are the results they want? And then what are the roadblocks in their way? so we could go a little bit deeper and asking, like, what's standing between you to accomplish in that goal? I mean, obviously one page marketing plan was an incredible success, is, continues to be an incredible success.

So you've just stated now that you're trying to [00:31:00] compete against yourself here. I mean, how's that going so far? You said it's going really well, but tell me more about that.

Allan: Yes it's going really well. The challenges or roadblocks ad costs are high. There's a lot more competition than ever before. There's a lot of really good free content that's out there. So obviously standing out your stuff has to be exceptional. there's some of the challenges of getting visibility on the right.

platforms. So one of the things that I'm doing is booking as a guest on well known podcasts

and things idea.

Yeah.

John Meese: Yeah. No, that's why I'm here. I think it's a great idea, Allan. The, so thank you. Thank you for sharing that. I appreciate it, Allan. I think it's helpful to give a real life example. But everybody's got this, right? We've all got things we care about and things that are sitting in our way.

And in a real serve call, right, I would ask you questions like, well, tell me more about that, you know, and what else? And like, oh, cool. What kind of podcasts have you been on so far? Like, what do you, what's your dream podcast? Is there any intro I can make for you? If you just were talking to a friend again, like maybe a friend you run into at a coffee shop and they ask you like, what are you working on right now?[00:32:00]

You probably have about two minutes to tell them what you're working on before they politely lose interest. That's very normal. And so part of the goal of a serve call is to just be kind, be curious, and just lean into that connection that you'll find. I mean, I find people just like. I mean, this, it starts to become almost a spiritual experience by the end of it, where we're just going deep on like just your goals and like what you care about and getting clear on what are the results you want, what are the roadblocks in the way, and then resources is this third category that, I used to focus on just results and roadblocks, but resources is this third category that sometimes becomes a plot twist.

So, for you, Allan, we might talk about the fact that one page marketing plan is actually a resource for you, that you have this like whole massive, you know, book and movement. Yeah. that you can leverage for new projects, right? I mean, they're not, especially because they're so closely related. I mean, if you were written a dog about a book about dog hair and then now a book about marketing, that's maybe a little bit of, it was more of a stretch, but there's one page marketing plan to lead marketing is there's a lot of synergy there, but sometimes resources turns into [00:33:00] something that you see as resource that they don't see.

So just as someone's talking, for example there's a woman named Tanya, for example, that a client of mine named Zach was having a serve call with and. I reviewed a transcript of it and him and I did some coaching around this, where she was sharing like her goal was to double her business this year. And she sells a course for real estate brokers to help them grow their practice.

And she mentioned that she was posting on LinkedIn all the time and it wasn't really turning into results. she was getting likes and comments, but not sales from that. So that's obviously a big roadblock for her. And so he's trying to help her solve that problem. But then at one point in the call, she just casually mentions that her course is 247. And this is the course designed to help a real estate broker potentially double their practice. I mean, like, dramatic results. So, if we had just been focusing on what Tanya had been saying in the call, which is like, My goal is to grow my business, my course business. I want to double it this year. I'm posting on LinkedIn every day.

I'm getting likes and comments, but I'm not getting sales. If we just focus on the results in [00:34:00] roadblocks there, without listening to some of the other resources that come up, We might not have noticed the fact that all she needs to do is double her price. Like literally, if she just doubles her price, she will double her business.

Because her target client has a really expensive problem to solve, and a very high ROI, and she has a very low priced product for that target client. But the point about that is like resources is third category that sometimes it's obvious, like one page marketing plan or like, I have a huge email list or I'm friends with the New York times bestselling author.

Sometimes that's what the resource is, but sometimes it's a total plot twist. Of something like, wait a minute you're dramatically underpriced for your target client, and that's actually a resource.

Allan: In that case 247 product and it's designed to double your business, I mean, why not 10X the price? I mean, it would still be a bargain at 10 times the price, not even at double, because if I'm a realtor and I can double my revenue, that's incredible.

John Meese: I agree, but Allan, do you know the reason most people don't raise their prices?

Allan: I do. I do. That's good.

John Meese: They're scared. So telling her to double it from [00:35:00] 247 to 500 is probably an easier first step than having her change it to a, you know, 5, 000 program. So I agree with you, but You know, that's where the human element comes in.

Yeah, so like if your goal is double it's Let's just try doubling your prices. See what happens, but you know, at this point I've gone through relationships and then results, roadblocks, resources, and then the recap. So, I mean, the time frame of how long you do these serve calls, of course, depends a little bit person to person.

But most of my clients will spend, I mean, a good 20 minutes on those first four, just like diving deep with people. And my preference is generally to schedule a 45 minute serve call, where the first 30 minutes is all 100 percent like high impact coaching and market research. And then the last 15 minutes is set aside for the recommendation, which we'll get to in a minute.

I personally will protect an hour on my calendar, because sometimes I'm talking to somebody and I realize, like, Oh man, we gotta go deep on this, and this could be really good. And so I like to have an extra 15 minutes where I can say, Hey, I'd like to gift you an extra 15 minutes of time today. I've got a little bit of time to the top of the hour.

Does that work for you? And of course they're always super grateful for it, but even though I already protected it. It's a little bit of like a Very in the weeds in terms [00:36:00] of how to conduct a serve call, but people need to know that, right? If you haven't done this before, like, these are all the questions you have to think through.

How long is the meeting going to be? What am I going to do exactly? But after you've got through results, roadblocks, and resources to the point where you feel like you do have a pretty complete picture, it's, and that's a three dimensional picture of their situation, right? Now, again you're continuing to ask questions about these three until you feel like you have a, you do have a comprehensive picture here.

Then you typically want to get to the recap. The recap, the question here is what is your most useful takeaway from today's call so far? Now, I want to point out here, while you and I, Allan, we're definitely giving Tanya advice in this moment. At this point, you typically haven't given any advice. All you've done is ask questions and they're typically very open ended questions.

They're not industry specific questions. And when you do that, all the time, this is the thing that people get stuck on. They're like, well, I can't ask them what their most useful takeaway is. I haven't told them anything yet. Just try it. And what you'll find out is people will tell you, they're like, Oh my gosh, I feel so seen that no one, I don't remember the last time somebody went this deep with me about like, I didn't [00:37:00] even realize that the reason why this book launch is important to me is because my dad died five years ago and he always knew I was going to be an author.

Like something like that will come up or someone will, they'll repeat back to you something that, from that conversation, that's really important. just monumental. And that's the perfect place. By the way, the words so far in that question are critical. What's your most useful takeaway from today's conversation so far?

That so far seeds in their mind that there's more value to come. So they know this is not me wrapping up the call, right? So every word matters here. Yeah.

Allan: I had a really good quote the other day. It was something like, nobody can stand truth if it's told to them. Truth can only be tolerated if you discover it yourself. So a lot of what you're trying to do is help them discover the thing themselves. Right. So, and that's kind of the difference between kind of coaching and consulting.

Consulting, you give the answers, whereas coaching, you're kind of drawing out the answers and helping them. come to the conclusion themselves.

John Meese: Yeah, this is what makes it a high impact coaching call is that you're [00:38:00] primarily just asking questions, which I know for anybody who has a bent for teaching, the hardest part is not giving advice every time they tell you a problem. That's the hardest part of the serve call, honestly, is just listening and asking more questions.

Now I will say, because most people who I work with do have this like almost like physical need to teach, back in that resources section, I do typically say, okay, you can give them one tip. You, it has to be something that's an idea that they can immediately apply though. It can't be a homework assignment because if it's something they got to go and do, well, now all of a sudden they're thinking about that and they're not really listening to anything else you say.

But the last page after the recommendation is a natural segue from that. So if I say what's the most useful takeaway from today's call so far, and they share something significant then the recommendation starts with, I believe I can help you. Would you like to share how?

That right there is really just permission to pitch, but it's done in a really natural conversation way where you're asking them to opt in.

And what I find what really happens is typically at this point, if you spend 30 minutes going deep with someone on their, on them, and you shine the light, your light on them the whole time, [00:39:00] most people are actually really uncomfortable with that at this point. Not that they don't like it. It's that the reciprocity effect has kicked in and now they feel like they owe you.

And so typically what I find is we get to this part of the call where I say, I believe I can help you. Would you like me to share how? And they say something like, yes please tell me more because I feel like we talked about me the whole time. I want to talk about you. I mean, yeah.

How can you help me? And they're enthusiastic about it.

I mean, I can't imagine a

Allan: the other thing that I've, the other thing that I've noticed is that, someone won't buy until they've felt heard, right? So a lot of what we want to do on a sales call is, diagnostics. So, if you go to a doctor, where does it hurt? When did it start happening?

What about when I twist it this way? what else have you tried? All of that sort of thing. because if you walked into a doctor and immediately gave you a prescription, you'd be suspicious. You'd be like, beware the doctor that gives you a prescription without a diagnosis, right?

So we're asking those probing, you. questions. And when, you know, we've all probably had the experience where we haven't felt heard by a doctor. Like, no, he's not really getting, you know, what's happening with my [00:40:00] symptoms and all of that. And we walk away frustrated and we generally don't follow advice or we'll seek out somebody else.

So I think it's very similar on a sales call. Someone wants to feel heard and understood, and then they'll be much more open to buying.

John Meese: exactly. Exactly. So just to end the recommendation, right? The first question there, the recommendation itself is actually three parts and I call it the triple yes recommendation. Cause that's your goal is to get three yeses, which of course humans love patterns of three. That if you start with a belief I can help you, would you like me to share how?

That's an easy yes. And then the, after that, the next question is, correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like what you really want is this clear, this result. I can clearly see that you have these resources, and I'd love to help you remove this roadblock. Does that sound like a good fit so far?

And really all we're doing at this point is we're showing that we've been listening and we're echoing back to someone. You said this matters to you, right? Here is the result you said you wanted. Here's the resources you have. Here's the roadblock. Does that sound like a good fit so far? There's no reason why someone should say no here if you've been listening.

because at this point you're just repeating back to them essentially what they said. But even though you're essentially repeating [00:41:00] back to them what they said, over and over again, I've had people on serve calls say, Oh my gosh, it's like you can read my mind. How did you do that? I'm just taking notes on what you said.

So you get the first, yes. And then the second, yes. And now comes great. I have a program that's designed to insert promise. And I'd love to have you join. Is that something you'd like to do? And that's it. That's the whole recommendation that you haven't told them. What's the price?

When does it start? You know, how many meetings are included? Any of that? Because at this point, I mean, especially when you're talking about premium programs, but in general. Humans make emotional decisions and then rationalize them later. The heart buys first. all you're asking here is a question of desire.

Allan, you mentioned the example of a doctor. That's something actually I bring up often with my clients and saying that your goal here is not to sell the medicine. It's the cure. That if I'm walking down the street and it's a hot day and I start wheezing and I'm kind of having trouble breathing and I rush over to the urgent care clinic and I sit down with a doctor and I'm like, doctor, I don't know what's going on.

I'm freaking out here. I'm having trouble breathing. And if he looks at me and says, you're albuterol. [00:42:00] don't know what to do with that. I'm freaked out, but he knows because he's an expert that I'm exhibiting all the symptoms of exercise induced asthma. And he knows that I, the best way to give me immediate relief is to give me an inhaler.

And he knows the most common Prescription medication used in an inhaler, at least in the U. S., is albuterol. I don't know any of that. I need him to look at me and say, I can help you breathe again. And that's the medicine and some of the cure. So typically, all you're doing here is you're just offering the promise and saying, is that something you'd like to do?

Now, most people will tell you, yes, but. That's the most common answer. Because you're saying, like, to use Mike Pacquiao as an example, well, I have a program that's designed to help you create an unforgettable signature talk that can earn you instant trust with any audience. Is that something you'd like to do?

It's like, well, yes, but I don't have any speaking engagements coming up. Is that going to be a problem? Or yes, but how much does it cost? Or yes, but when does it start? But at this point, it's a customer led close where they say, yes, but how much does it cost? You say it's 5, 000. Would you like to join?

What you [00:43:00] don't do is you don't say it's 5, 000 because, you know, like my one on one coaching is like really expensive. And so I want something more affordable, but not something super cheap. What a lot of people do without guardrails here is they just kind of introduce objections. But your goal here is to let the customer tell you the objection, resolve it, and then just ask them again.

Would you like to join?

Allan: Well, it's separating commitment from logistics. It's like, in on what we've discussed? If no, then okay, we can end the call there. Or maybe we haven't got exchanged enough information or haven't understood. But. Yes I'm dialed into what you've got to offer. I like what you've been telling me.

I like what, where we've been going. Now that logistics, how much, how long can I, do you have split pay? Do you, whatever, all of that sort of thing. So a lot of people kind of mix up the commitment and logistics often, and it just gets, becomes a muddled mess. So it's like, Hey, do we want this? Okay, great.

Now let's talk logistics.

John Meese: Yeah, so that's the full serve call framework. I mean, and my goal here, I mean, honestly, like, don't need to be attached to my name. I want this to just take off like wildfire and just become the new [00:44:00] norm for how professionals sell premium programs because I mean, I get thank you messages from people who've gone through serve call and received it.

Right. I mean, what does that happen on a sales call, right? And so, and I've seen clients now build six and seven, seven figure businesses off the back of nothing but serve calls. Because what happens is when you're selling a premium program and you're meeting with your target client to have a serve call is that you realize, oh wow, there's this whole other problem that I can solve, I didn't even realize was.

that important and that can become a gateway product, right? That might be the topic of your next paid workshop is that you're essentially getting paid to do market research. Whereas most huge companies pay massive amounts of money to third party companies to do market research for them.

Allan: That's awesome. That's awesome. Thanks, John.

Starting from Zero: Building Your Client Base for Premium Coaching
---

Allan: How are you solving the cold start problem where, okay, I'm bought in on serve selling. I'm about to start as a consultant or coach or whatever else. I'm at zero. I don't have leads. I don't have a email database. I don't have anything. How are we starting from zero?

Yeah.

John Meese: And I do work with [00:45:00] a lot of people in that situation. so I have a membership called sold out coach club and we ended up working on a lot of these kinds of things. I mean, step one is literally to go through your phone contacts or email contacts and find 10 people who you think are your target client.

And, you know, if you're building a business to solve a problem for real people you're creating a real solution to a real problem for real people, then you should be able to look through your phone contacts or email contacts and find at least 10 people. who are that target client. If you can't, you need to go find them.

I was just working with one client who, you know, he's trying to serve kind of younger, like millennial dads, but he's an older, he's like, I don't know any though. And so we just pulled up meetup. com and literally we're like, okay, you know, working dad kind of meetup group in your area, go and get to know them.

I mean, it's really like you have to, it starts with relationships. And so typically it starts with just like, again, finding 10 people could be your social media connections, your phone contacts, email contacts, whatever, and just reaching out to them. And I will say at first, I mean, I call this a serve call, but I've never once called this a serve call to a client because if I was like, Hey, do you want to jump in a serve [00:46:00] call?

What are you talking about? I don't know what you mean. I regularly correct them for calling them service calls. That's something else, totally different. This is not that. so what I will say is like, hey, I'd love to, you know, would you be willing to chat sometime?

I'd love to learn more about your goals and what you're working on. Like that's the whole pitch, but if I know they're my target client, that's how I get them out of conversation. Now at this point where I have more inbound leads than I need, then I'm saying, you know, asking questions and then saying like, Hey, you qualify for one free coaching call.

Would you like that? But when I started, it was more outbound. And that's what a lot of people, where everyone starts is like, just finding a list of 10 people reaching out. And then that's where you're getting every single person you meet with is getting you. Detailed results, roadblocks, resources that you can use now to create a promise for a program to be able to grow your business.

Allan: John. I think that's a very valuable approach. It's definitely an approach I've taken over the years. It's served me [00:47:00] well and I think it'll serve everybody else well. And the people that You are trying to help as well. So, I like that it aligns with, Hey, this is actually helpful marketing.

This is actually something that's going to help you get a result in advance. And in my experience, that's the best, most efficient, least wasteful use of marketing resources that, that you can have. So something that actually gives someone a result in

Creates a lot of positive goodwill. And even if they don't buy, they may know somebody else who is a good fit.

They may refer you to someone. So all of these things are really valuable. John really appreciate your time and your wisdom. So your book is called Serve to Sell available right now, where all good books are, sold. Where does someone connect with you and find you? And we'll obviously link to that in the show notes as well.

John Meese: Thank you. You can't find me on social media anywhere. I mean, as my business has grown, I've deleted all of my social media accounts and so I'm unt Tagable but you can't find me at johnmeese.com. Of course. And then my email address is in the back of the book, so you can reach out anytime.

Allan: [00:48:00] Oh, wonderful. Well, thank you, John. Thank you so much. And I really appreciate you being on today's show.

John Meese: It's my pleasure. Thank you, Al. Keep up the good work.

​

‍